NCAB pursues a purposeful partner strategy developed to establish a secure and dependable supply of PCBs for you. The strategy also includes tracking down new – and developing existing – production partners. Our partner strategy consists of the following elements:

Minimization of risk through diversification of purchasing: NCAB will place no more than 20% of its PCB purchases with any one production partner. This minimizes several risk factors – for example, a factory being hit by a major production stoppage, or a production partner adopting a new strategy that no longer fits with that of NCAB.

Broad product offering: NCAB will have at least two production partners for each type of PCB. These include singled-sided PCBs, 2–16 layer PCBs, HDI PCBs (laser vias and conductors less than 0.10mm), flex-rigid PCBs, flex PCBs and PCBs with HF applications. This guarantees that NCAB will always have optional production partners – and also develops our ability to meet all our customers’ needs.

Effective means of exerting pressure: The production partners chosen as partners by NCAB must be able to adapt their strategy to NCAB’s needs. This creates benefits to NCAB’s customers, and forms the basis of stable, long-term partnership and efficient collaboration.

Efficiency: NCAB will only work with efficient organizations. NCAB will verify that production partners are organizations with a high degree of expertise and efficient systems. NCAB places great emphasis on working proactively, managing quality defects efficiently and ensuring that production partners can adapt their production to the demands of NCAB’s customers. To guarantee this, we focus continuously on developing and monitoring our production partners.

Relationship Strategy - our way of working

Office in China
To be able to respond more quickly to our production partners in Asia, we established an office in Shenzhen, China, in March 2003. Its focus is on logistics and quality for the entire NCAB Group, including looking after logistics from China to our sales offices in Europe. Our production partners are quality assured here, via audits and quality checks at the factories. The process of finding new production partners takes place here as well. Being geographically on the spot creates the right conditions for effective development in association with our production partners.

Strategic Purchasing
To further strengthen collaboration with our production partners in China and Europe, we have a strategic purchase function that focuses on our development programme for production partners. The emphasis is on follow-up to secure a higher level of delivery precision and quality, and on a continuous search for new production partners.