Electronics Manufacturing Succession Planning: Past, Present, and Future

September 30, 2024

Electronics Manufacturing Succession Planning: Past, Present, and Future

Most small businesses start out the same: they have a team of specialists that are able to lock in and do their jobs better than anyone, they grow and gain new clients and specialties over time and find years if not decades of great success. But history shows that one issue presents itself repeatedly. That core team of specialists will eventually retire or otherwise leave the business for any number of reasons. Without a succession plan in place, things could get sticky. When you properly plan for attrition, you can avoid disruption in service and production. And a bonus to succession planning is a path for career growth. As an electronics manufacturing services provider and a small business, we find that succession planning is critical to continuity of operations. So how does a company plan for succession? Pretty easily! As a business, it’s important to always look at three parts of succession planning: past, present, and future. Let’s dig into each.

Past: Past refers to how things have always been done. For example, how do we ensure our customers’ electronics product gets out the door functioning? Once the product is made through the necessary production process (mechanical assembly, soldering, SMT, etc.), it’s run through our test department and quality department to check for both function and assembly accuracy. Take a look at your day-to-day tasks, things that are methodical, and write it out into a step-by-step guide. This will become one of the many standard operating procedures (SOPs) that you can lump together into a full guide. You can always update these SOPs as your company does (new PCB design revisions, new SMT machines, new QC standards, etc.) and refer to them when training a new hire for your department. And most importantly, this presents an easier entry into career growth for other team members in your company. You can hand your guide to someone from an entirely different department (like a stockroom associate going into a test operator position), and they’ll be able to pick up right where you left off without the need for a month if not more of training just to get the basics down.

Present: Present refers to cross training the personnel in your department. Every department has had that one team member that is the absolute go-to for a few very specific problems, and we all know the pain it causes when that one individual goes on vacation. The issue with a lack of cross-training is two-fold: there’s the potential negative effect on production when the go-to is not available. And that same go-to team member themselves likely feels as though they can’t take a vacation or sick day without a ripple effect to operations. Cross-training aims to avoid that by allowing depth to each day-to-day task that the team runs. In tandem with SOPs, cross-training helps make everyone a go-to team member. While some will excel at certain tasks versus others (there’s a reason your go-to was a go-to in the first place), everyone will be able to keep the ship afloat should someone be out sick or on vacation or any other number of scenarios. This is especially necessary in electronics manufacturing, since most positions are specialized as-is, you want to make sure your team can pick up the slack for a PCB Designer or Manufacturing Engineer. An easy way to account for this is to have junior positions, like a Junior PCB Designer or Junior Manufacturing Engineer. These allow team members to have a starting point as well as a door for career growth with on-the-job training.

Future: Here’s my spotlight. Future refers to two things: recruiting and growth. These play hand in hand. As an example, let’s say you’re running a three-person quality control team. You have a Quality Engineer, an AOI Operator and a QC Inspector. Your engineer is getting ready to retire in the next five years or so and as a result, they begin succession planning. The AOI Operator is doing a great job and has handled additional duties with a positive attitude and without any issues cropping up after training. The QC Inspector is able to complete day-to-day tasks with relative ease but finds their days stacked with little time for additional tasks. With succession planning, you can train up your AOI Operator on the gaps needed to fill in for the Engineer. You can also begin to train your QC Inspector on the tasks needed to fill in for the AOI Operator while beginning to recruit for an additional QC Inspector. This opens opportunity for team members to gain career growth by building experience in a different electronics manufacturing functions (for example, you may have a Stockroom Associate or Solder who feels like they have what it takes to gain experience in Quality). You can train your new personnel with the SOPs you’ve created and even cross-train them on a few tasks that are part of the day-to-day of your new AOI Inspector. The point is to have a methodical, well-paced plan that allows your team time to iron out the kinks of filling in a new position.

The broad scope of past, present, and future must be considered when shifting your department to a succession planning perspective of your day-to-day operations. Failure to do so could result in a reduction in operational efficiency. Succession planning is a good idea for most industries, but specially electronics manufacturing. Most positions in electronics manufacturing are hyper-specialized and often the best solution to turnover or coverage is to have a succession plan in place. Next time a go-to team member goes on vacation, or someone announces their retirement, or someone moves on to “greener pastures”, have a succession plan in place and let everyone win.

Guest Blogger: Giovanni Jauregui