LACROIX and Würth Elektronik: how hands-on coengineering turns a manufacturability challenge into an industrial success

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LACROIX, a leading EMS (Electronic Manufacturing Services) provider in the European electronics industry, and component manufacturer Würth Elektronik are highlighting the success of a co-engineering approach. Together, the two partners successfully adapted a complex component to make it fully compatible with the requirements of mass-production industrialization in Europe on behalf of a leading player in smart lighting, a customer of LACROIX.

An industrialization challenge solved through technical ingenuity

The board’s thermal complexity, combined with the component’s specific requirements, made industrial-scale soldering on the site’s standard equipment particularly challenging.

Faced with this integration challenge, LACROIX’s in-house DfX (Design for Excellence) expertise made the difference. LACROIX teams carried out a POC (Proof of Concept) by adapting the Würth production component to promote convection beneath the part. While this solution worked perfectly at prototype stage, the real challenge was to make it robust and repeatable for serial production.

Hands-on collaboration in support of industrialization

This is where the synergy between the EMS (Electronic Manufacturing Services) provider and the component manufacturer came into play. Unlike certain industry practices, Würth Elektronik’s teams engaged directly on site to gain a first-hand understanding of LACROIX’s requirements and manufacturing constraints.

Driven by a shared commitment to responsiveness and collaboration, Würth Elektronik’s sales and technical teams agreed to integrate this modification directly into their own production lines. This pragmatic approach enabled a technical adaptation initially developed by LACROIX to become a standardized industrial process, securing the robustness of the final product and the supply chain continuity.

At Würth Elektronik, we believe that a customer who challenges us is an opportunity to improve. Being on the ground and understanding the realities of hardware design and PCB manufacturing enables us to integrate new solutions into our own organization: this approach, sometimes outside our internal processes, pushes us to be better. This is exactly the kind of collaboration that moves us forward, and I hope contributes to the successful completion of projects within our European industry.

Christopher PAUL
Würth Elektronik

European sovereignty and advanced co-engineering

Beyond the technical achievement, this project demonstrates the value of a strong and interconnected European electronics ecosystem. By combining the expertise of a leading European component manufacturer with LACROIX’s industrial know-how, the collaboration highlights several strategic advantages:

Sovereignty and shorter supply chains: A technical network that supports Europe’s advanced industry
Co-engineering: Proof that LACROIX positions itself as a partner with strong technical added value, capable of optimizing design upstream, rather than simply assembling electronic boards.
Supply chain security: Greater responsiveness to industrial uncertainties thanks to the proximity of stakeholders.

Toward a new dimension of services

This first technical success has opened the way for further collaboration between LACROIX and Würth Elektronik. The two companies are now exploring several areas of cooperation aimed at strengthening their technical, industrial and supply chain synergies in support of their customers’ future projects.

This project illustrates the value LACROIX brings to its customers: comprehensive technical expertise that can be engaged from the design phase to unlock situations that others might consider dead ends. In this case, the DfX approach became a reality: the P in DFP, with technical support and consideration of economic constraints by our partner Würth, and the M in DFM, took shape through modification to both the PCB and component design, enabling reliable and automated production in Europe. This is the kind of partnership model we want to develop further with our ecosystem.

Grégory VINCENT
LACROIX