Bittele’s RMA Process

At Bittele Electronics, quality is paramount. Our PCB Assembly Process includes multiple stages of verification and testing to help ensure we get your order right the first time. We are fully confident in our process, and we work continuously to improve it as much as possible, so if we ever do make a mistake on your boards, we pledge to make it right for you as soon as possible. Clients of Bittele can rest easy, knowing that our General Warranty covers any issues that could possibly take place during PCB Fabrication or PCB Assembly. Here we will discuss the steps involved with the Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) process for Bittele Electronics, and we outline how you can get your boards in working order as soon as possible.

Fault Finding

If you notice any type of defect in your completed PCBs from Bittele Electronics—electrical, mechanical, aesthetic, or otherwise—you should get in touch with your Bittele Account Manager as soon as possible. Your account manager is the Bittele technologist who developed your quotation and remained as your main point of contact throughout the production process. Let your account manager know in as much detail as possible exactly what type of issue you are noticing in your PCBs, providing pictures if applicable.

Bittele’s production team will often catch potential issues during the production process as a result of our extensive testing and verification options, such as Visual Inspections, Electrical Testing, X-Ray Inspection, AOI Testing, In-Circuit Testing, and Functional Testing. In this case, your Bittele account manager will reach out to you as soon as the fault is noticed and let you know the next step in the correction process.

Root Cause Investigation

As soon as Bittele is made aware of a defect in one of our PCBs, we launch a Root Cause Investigation. This procedure is carried out by our process engineering team, along with the project manager for your specific PCB project. The Root Cause Investigation aims to determine the exact reason for the issue noted in the finished PCBs and pinpoint the moment in production where the issue could have been avoided. The time required for this procedure depends upon the specific project and issue in question, but your account manager will normally communicate the results of Bittele’s Corrective Action report back to you within one business day.

Bittele keeps a record of past Root Cause Investigations and conducts regular reviews in order to continuously improve our PCB Assembly Process. Regular review of Root Cause Investigations helps us to ensure that we never repeat the same mistake twice.

Corrective Action Report

Once we are clear on the exact cause of the issue, Bittele’s process engineering team develops a Corrective Action Report. This report contains recommendations for how the defective PCBs can be repaired or replaced, ensuring that a similar issue does not occur in the future. Quite often, the Root Cause Investigation and the Corrective Action Report are both completed in the same business day after you a fault has been noticed, but again, the time required does depend upon the issue in question.

Your account manager with Bittele will send you the results of our Corrective Action Report and request your feedback before beginning any corrective actions. We always keep our clients in the loop with regard to any rework needed on their PCBs.

Rework, Repair, and Replacement

With a comprehensive strategy in place, the only thing left to do is correct the issue in question. Correction can sometimes be accomplished by simply reworking or repairing the defective PCBs, but in other cases the cost or time requirements of rework might outweigh those of simply re-making the boards altogether. We normally ask in any case that you ship the defective boards back to us to aid in our investigations. These considerations will be established and explored fully in the Corrective Action Report.

If the Root Cause Investigation finds that Bittele is at fault for the issue in question, we will of course repair or replace your defective PCBs at no additional cost to you as soon as possible. Even in the case where we find that a design error caused the issue, we can sometimes provide rework services to get your prototypes in working order at a lower cost than a full re-make, especially if the defect is noticed before we ship your finished boards out to you.

Bittele Electronics remains committed to providing our clients with top quality PCBs in every order. Our comprehensive RMA process allows us to fix any mistakes as efficiently as possible, and to ensure that we never make the same mistake again.

Share




Related Articles:

Search articles:




« Older Posts




Our Clients Include