Moving an industrial IoT sensor to a new EMS partner in 14 weeks

The challenge

The client’s wireless vibration sensor was selling well, but their original contract manufacturer could not keep up. Lead times had grown to 16 weeks, first-pass yield was under 90%, and each new purchase order came with a price increase. They needed a new manufacturing partner without putting existing customer deliveries at risk.

What we did

1. Manufacturing readiness audit

We started with a two-week audit of the design package, BOM and test process. We found:

• Nine single-sourced components, including two with an end-of-life notice already published
• No formal functional test. Units were only checked with a manual power-on test
• Gerbers and assembly drawings that did not match the latest schematic revision

2. BOM hardening

Together with the client’s engineering team we qualified alternates for seven of the nine single-sourced parts. For the RF module, where no drop-in alternate existed, we put a last-time-buy plan and buffer stock in place.

3. EMS selection

We sent a normalized RFQ package to five pre-qualified EMS providers across two regions, audited the two shortlisted sites in person, and negotiated a contract with clear yield, lead-time and price-review terms.

4. Industrialization

We designed a pogo-pin functional test fixture that covers 94% of nets, wrote the work instructions, and ran a 200-unit pilot build before releasing to volume.

“Apthea Labs gave us a manufacturing team overnight. The transfer was the smoothest one we have ever done.” — VP Engineering

Results

The new line shipped its first volume order 14 weeks after kickoff. There were no gaps in customer deliveries, unit cost dropped by 18%, and first-pass yield settled above 99%.