Scott Bright
Why Manual PCB Reviews Fail %%(and it's not what you think)%%
Save thousands in manufacturing costs by identifying critical errors before production.
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1. Reviews depend on memory, not systems
Even senior engineers rely on mental checklists. But memory becomes unreliable under time pressure and design complexity.
2. Visual inspection hides systemic errors
Manual reviews catch obvious layout issues but often miss subsystem interactions and performance risks.
- Return path discontinuities
- Suboptimal decoupling placement
- Stackup manufacturability risks
3. Confirmation bias creeps in
When engineers believe a design is correct, reviews shift from investigation to validation.
The most dangerous review is the one where nothing feels wrong.
4. Reviews happen too late
Late-stage reviews increase political and financial pressure to ignore major findings.
5. Lack of repeatability
Without standardized checklists and automation, manual reviews become subjective.
Conclusion
Manual reviews fail not due to incompetence, but due to scale. Structured systems augment human expertise and reduce risk before fabrication.
3. Incomplete power integrity review
Power delivery networks require careful analysis. Inadequate decoupling, incorrect PDN impedance, or missing ground planes can all lead to unpredictable behavior that's difficult to debug after fabrication.
4. Ignoring signal context
Teams often focus on individual nets without considering how signals interact across the board.
High-speed interfaces require:
- Careful impedance control and matching
- Proper return path management
- Awareness of EMI concerns not captured in standard DRC
- Crosstalk analysis between adjacent signals
- Length matching for differential pairs and buses
5. Conclusion
The most expensive PCB failures rarely come from advanced design challenges — they come from missed fundamentals. Gaps in schematic review, overreliance on DRC, incomplete power integrity analysis, and loss of signal context often go unnoticed until late in the design cycle, where fixes become costly and disruptive. Embedding systematic, intent-aware validation early in the workflow allows engineering teams to catch issues when they are still easy to correct. This approach reduces board respins, shortens development cycles, and delivers more predictable performance in production. In PCB design, early validation is not extra effort — it is the most effective way to control risk, cost, and time-to-market.
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