The relationship and difference between EMS and PCBA

Electronic Manufacturing Service (EMS) is provided by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), which include testing, manufacturing, distribution, and providing return/repair service of electronics products. This concept is also known as Electronic Product Contract Manufacturing (ECM).  

The EMS industry emerged in the late 1970s. At that time, most electronic manufacturing and large-scale products were mostly assembled inside the company. The business model of EMS industry is specialized in large-scale economic production, procurement of raw materials and centralized resources. Provide professional solutions for industrial design, and creation of value-added services such as warranty and maintenance. This will free up customers with huge inventories. Therefore, they can respond faster and more effectively to the sudden peak of demand. Surface mount technology (SMT) of printed circuit board (PCB) realizes the rapid assembly of electronic products.   

In the early 1990s, OEM manufacturers quickly installed SMT production lines. By the mid-1990s, the advantages of the EMS concept were noticeable and OEMs began to outsource printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) on a large scale. By the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century, many OEMs sold their assembly plants to actively compete for market of EMS. The wave of integration followed, as more capital companies can quickly buy existing plants and small EMS companies.  

Printed circuit boards, often use the English abbreviation PCB, which is an important electronic component, a support for electronic components, and a provider of circuit connections for electronic components. Because it is made using electronic printing technology, it is called a "printed" circuit board. PCBA is the abbreviation of Printed Circuit Board + Assembly in English. In simple terms, PCBA can be a series of processes consisting of SMT chip processing, DIP plug-in processing and PCBA testing.  

Among them, SMT chip processing is simply to process electronic components onto the bare PCB board. The PCB board is printed with solder paste, components are mounted, reflow soldering and AOI inspection, quality inspection by the quality department, etc. manufacturing processes. Then proceed to DIP plug-in processing.  

DIP plug-in processing refers to plug-in processing of electronic components that cannot be mounted by SMT machine, include wave soldering, leads cutting, quality inspection and other processes. So far, most of the PCBA processing has been completed. Then it needs to be tested and the program is burned. Complete the entire fabricating process.  

EMS actually includes OEM and ODM, and OEM and ODM also include PCBA. Therefore, the PCBA process is actually an integral part of EMS. Compared with PCBA, EMS has higher process difficulty and complexity, and requires a high technical foundation.