In this talk, I will explain how significant price, performance, and timeline benefits can be realized by expanding your skill sets into these areas, and actively participating in them, alongside your colleagues who may be focused on them. I spend a lot of time focused on supply chain optimization, pricing negotiations, and program management when I’m not designing PCBs. To meet these challenges effectively, engineers and product designers must become comfortable interleaving business, supply chain, and sourcing responsibilities into the technical conversations that they are already having with their vendors and manufacturers. But, in recent years, times to market have decreased, supply chain complexity has increased, and the interplays between the electrical and non-electrical parts of most products have become exceedingly complex. Most engineers will tell you that they are most effective when they are able to focus on the technical parts of product design. The 2020 AltiumLive annual PCB Design conference may have been virtual, thanks to COVID-19, but that didn’t stop me from participating and giving a keynote focused on supply chain management for engineers.

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