1)PCB is customized goods, engineering question is making sure what supplier produced is exact the same as Gerbers and Spec.including Layer count,board size,board thickness,surface treatment,material,inpedence control;

2)Application and products of this project, different industrial have different requirement and cost affecting factors.

3) Quotation stage including bidding stage and confirmed projects, different stage have ranges of support, conifrmed projects will have priority.

1)Make the best of tiered pricing;Do you order some projects with stable quantity and no verson change?If so, collecting projects and talk with end customer, quaterly demadn order will get dicount instead of monthly demand order;of cause PCB supplier would prefer to run a larger quantity, which is a win-win satuation.

2)Panelization design will come first, ask your engineering team “can we put boards in an arrey which is good for SMT”, and every area counts, if it is necessary to have tails/break away this wide?

3)Surface treatment is also make up big percentage of the whole cost;please confirm do you really need ENIG for every projects?

4)Timely payment and shorter payment terms will makes it much easier to get price concessions and discount;
Many PCB supplier will offer priority to high quality customers, bending to price pressures, responding quickly when an expedite is needed, or acting to resolve a quality problem; Timely payment are one of the most important factor to become high quality customer;

1) Caused by capcacity,prepare for upcoming capacity of PCB factories, communicate with end customers and place order in advance;

2) Cased by technology problem and rework; Join VMI program if your project is stable in QTY and Gerber version;

3) Needed by quick sample it is, pay Quick turn charge if poosible;

4) Inform your PCB supplier first, and monitor the WIP every single day, any unusual status let supplier know and take next action;