Navigating the Human Side of Electronics Failure Analysis: Evidence, Supply Chains, and Uncomfortable Conversations
Navigating the Human Side of Electronics Failure Analysis: Evidence, Supply Chains, and Uncomfortable Conversations
In electronics, failure analysis is a lot like detective work—except we’re hunting for clues inside microscopic components, instead of fingerprints and DNA. The technical side of this work is demanding, but what's often even trickier is how to turn the evidence from failure analysis into meaningful, effective action when navigating the human complexities of a supply chain.
Let’s face it: even the best technical analysis isn’t always enough on its own. You also need to get suppliers, internal teams, and customers on the same page—no easy feat when everyone has a different interest or perspective. As an independent expert in these teams, I’m not influenced by internal politics, supplier relationships or customer pressures but I’ve witnessed how these factors complicate matters and slow progress. It is part of my role to help teams navigate these issues and get to solutions, fast.
In this blog, we'll look at how we can use evidence to guide these conversations, even when the truth can be difficult for stakeholders to swallow.
When the fault is with the Defensive Supplier: Evidence vs. Accountability
You’ve been there. You have irrefutable proof that a defect in a component supplied by a particular vendor is causing your product to fail. You present the data—cross-sections, chemical analysis, maybe even a time-lapse showing how exactly the material degrades. And what do you get? Denial. The supplier shrugs it off, maybe suggests you’re using the part wrong, blames your assembly process or, presents a pile of irrelevant data and statistics to bore you into submission. One thing is for sure, none of their other customers have this problem; It must be you.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The evidence you've collected is your strongest asset, but getting a supplier to take responsibility requires more than a technical presentation—it’s about strategy and persistence. Here’s what I’ve found to work:
Be Ready to Educate: Suppliers may not be seeing the whole picture. Presenting the failure evidence in a way that connects to their processes helps. Bring it back to their testing parameters, tolerances, or production practices. Sometimes a supplier's denial is simply because they don’t understand how the failure fits into their world.
Get Allies Within Their Team: Try to find the engineering champions within the supplier’s organisation. Those individuals who speak your language and understand how the failure could occur. But don’t expect them to take the blame. These are the people who implement a fix behind the scenes. Suddenly, your next batch will be top notch. Just watch out for a slip in standards over time and look for ways to track the changes that we both know they made.
Have a Plan for Them to Save Face: Suppliers don't like blame—it can threaten existing business or even someone’s job. Instead of focusing on’blame’ “fault,” shift the discussion to collaboration. It’s about preventing a recurrence. When they see that working with you could save them headaches down the road, they may just listen. In these cases, we can present solutions that may fix the issue. Sometimes this can be challenging when the supplier is guarded about their process but most often, we can get close enough to plant a seed.
When the Problem Is In-House: Negotiating with the Naysayers
Sometimes, the evidence points to an uncomfortable truth—the problem lies within your own company. It could be a design oversight, a manufacturing quirk, or even just an honest mistake in assembly. These moments are tough because you’re not just dealing with technical truths; you’re managing people, their pride, and sometimes, even their livelihood.
Lead with Data, Follow with Empathy: Presenting evidence without empathy can alienate colleagues. Use the data to explain what happened but follow up with why it’s understandable and how the team can collectively fix it. Shift from “how did we mess up?” to “how can we learn and prevent it in the future?”
Bring the Solution with the Problem: Internal sceptics are often softened when they see a way out. If you present not just the root cause, but also a potential solution, you’re demonstrating that you’re not there to point fingers—you’re there to resolve things and move forward.
Use “Blameless Post-Mortems”: Borrowed from the software world, this is where you analyse a failure without assigning blame. It’s a great way to get naysayers on board, especially when the failure involves in-house factors. When people see that the focus is on learning, they’re more likely to engage.
Working Around the “Expert” Customer: When They Think They Know the Answer
Then, there’s the customer who comes in guns blazing, convinced they know exactly why their product failed. They’ll give you a pre-diagnosis—maybe they’re convinced it’s a solder issue, or maybe they’re adamant that you used the wrong grade of material. But your data tells a different story.
The goal here is to hear and understand their perspective without allowing it to derail finding the actual solution.
Acknowledge, Then Educate: Customers often just want to be heard. Acknowledge their theories, and then use the evidence to gently shift their perspective. Frame it like a journey: “That’s definitely a possible reason—we looked into that angle and found something surprising…” It’s about bringing them on the same learning path without directly confronting their hypothesis.
Show, Don’t Tell: People are visual. Where possible, show them your findings—use annotated micrographs, photos, charts, or videos to explain the failure mechanism. It’s one thing to say “It wasn’t a solder issue”—it’s far more effective to show a perfectly formed joint beside a PCB via defect.
Keep the End Goal in Mind: It’s not about proving them wrong; it’s about finding a solution they’re happy with. Be mindful of the balance between evidence and their expectations—sometimes it’s as much about addressing their concerns as it is about solving the technical issue.
An example of the Defensive Supplier – aka Shaggy “It wasn’t me”
This project changed my understanding of my role entirely. Until this investigation, I thought I my skills were technical only, I am a physicist, a failure investigator and an electronics materials specialist. Afterwards, I understood my ability to present results in different ways to different people would be fundamental to successfully implementing effective solutions, quickly.
After a thorough investigation into the root-cause of open circuit failures, irrefutable evidence was identified of a failure to form a copper-to-copper metallurgical bond between a blind via and the copper foil of a PCB. The evidence strongly supported the fact that the PCB manufacturing process was at fault. Case closed. Right?
Wrong! The customer approached their PCB supplier, who argued that the PCB passed continuity check prior to assembly, so the assembly process (reflow soldering) must have been too aggressive and caused the via to split apart. A younger, less experienced, naive me subsequently collected more data. I found the solder joint was in normal condition—if it had been subject to excessive temperature, there would have been evidence in the microstructure and intermetallic compounds to reflect that. There was little evidence of ductile fracture of the copper—if it had formed correctly then failed, there would be a chewing gum like stretch of the copper across the width of the bond until it finally ruptured. The facts gathered all helped our customer but not the supplier. Apparently lack of evidence to support the supplier’s claims does not prove their guilt.
We were then presented with a barrage of information from handwritten records of process quality checks to blurry images of micro-sections showing perfectly formed via structures. At this point, the rather inappropriate lyrics of the afore mentioned Jamacian-American reggae musician “it wasn’t me” repeated in my head and I realised that this fight was not worth having.
I then turned to the issue at hand. In the space between the two layers of copper that were supposed to be bonded was a partial layer of oxidation. The oxidation was coated in graphite flakes indicating that the shadow process was used as a seed layer, and this seemed to be doing its job. But the oxidation shouldn’t be there. Over 80% of the capture pad was covered in oxidation, leaving less than 20% of the via bonded, resulting in a weak bond. The next time I spoke to the group, I focused solely on one thing, the PCB cleaning processes. I asked questions and I empathised—high aspect ratio blind vias are a nightmare to clean.
No one admitted liability but the supplier offered to run another batch of boards as a goodwill gesture and implement additional process checks. The vias were spotless and there was epitaxy across the copper-to-copper bond. Problem solved.
The Human Element: Turning Failure into Action
In every failure analysis, you’re dealing with people, not just products. The technical work is demanding, but the real art lies in guiding stakeholders—suppliers, internal teams, customers—through the messy, sometimes ego-driven landscape that follows a failure.
Suppliers need a way to collaborate without risking reputational damage.
Internal teams need empathy alongside hard truths.
Customers need to feel like they’re part of the solution, even when their initial guesses were wrong.
Ultimately, the evidence we collect is powerful, but it’s not enough to simply gather the facts—we need to guide people through those facts in a way that builds trust, accountability, and positive action. At the end of the day, failure analysis isn’t just about the data; it’s about how we use that data to bring people together toward a solution. That’s how to prevent the next failure, improve supply chain relationships, and ultimately innovate better, more reliable products.
As an independent expert, I bring objectivity and clarity to these situations. I have no internal politics to worry about, no critical supplier to keep on side and no customer pressures making it easier for me to navigate the human side of these debates. My role is to objectively determine the root cause, relying solely on evidence, and to present my findings in a clear and constructive way. My impartiality and experience navigating the human side of electronics failure analysis ensures that the team’s focus remains on finding an effective solution.