For Electronics Contract Manufacturers

Ship electronics programs on time.

BlackOrbit is the coordination layer for electronics contract manufacturers. Every BOM change coordinated. Every ECO followed through. Every AVL pivot and supplier sync captured. Less coordination tax, more shipping programs.

Design partner cohort · 3 of 5 spots remaining
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ITAR-ready
IPC-aware ontology
Live in 1 day
Electronics
IPC-A-610
J-STD-001
IPC-A-600
BOM Coordination
AVL Management
ECO Velocity
Defense Electronics
ITAR / CUI
AS9100
Component Obsolescence
DFM Loops
FAI / FATP
IPC-WHMA-A-620
Electronics
IPC-A-610
J-STD-001
IPC-A-600
BOM Coordination
AVL Management
ECO Velocity
Defense Electronics
ITAR / CUI
AS9100
Component Obsolescence
DFM Loops
FAI / FATP
IPC-WHMA-A-620
Why coordination breaks in electronics NPI

Your boards don't ship late because of engineering. They ship late because the BOM, the AVL, and the ECOs move faster than the team can coordinate.

50%+
Growth in time spent coordinating, not building*
Time spent in meetings, on email, and on collaboration has grown by half over the past two decades. Most managers now spend the majority of their workweek on it, not on skilled work.
26 wk
Average semiconductor lead time during 2022–2024 shortage†
Component pivots become the program. Without a coordination layer, every AVL substitution risks the test plan, the DFM, and the customer commitment. EMS teams absorb the chaos.
65%+
Of manufacturers say program talent is their #1 business challenge‡
Counting on hiring won't be enough. Your program managers and process engineers need leverage, quickly.

* Cross, Rebele & Grant, "Collaborative Overload" — Harvard Business Review (Jan–Feb 2016). hbr.org/2016/01/collaborative-overload

† Susquehanna Financial Group semiconductor lead-time tracker; McKinsey, Coping with the chip shortage (2023). Lead times for select MCUs and power-management ICs sustained 26+ weeks through mid-2024.

‡ National Association of Manufacturers, Manufacturers' Outlook Survey. Talent has ranked #1 for 16 consecutive quarters. nam.org/manufacturers-outlook-survey

The platform

A coordination platform for electronics NPI with an agentic engine built in.

The fundamentals of electronics NPI coordination: portfolio view, work packages aware of BOM changes, coordination around ECOs and AVL pivots, IPC stage gates (IPC-A-610, J-STD-001, IPC-A-600), FAI / FATP, owners, dates. Plus an engine working underneath: ingesting signals, proposing actions with provenance, drafting comms, flagging risks, learning from every confirm or correct.

Inside a BlackOrbit program: work packages, owners, dates, and gates
Portfolio view of every BlackOrbit program
Portfolio
Every program, one view.

All your active NPI programs in one place — current stage, owner, blockers, and risk. See the whole portfolio at a glance, then drill into any program.

Stage gates with native checklists
Gates
Gated process with native checklists.

AS9102 FAI, PPAP, DFM sign-offs, IPC inspection categories. Configurable per program. Sign-offs and traceability built in.

Proposal cards in the cockpit
Agents
5 agents removing time-consuming tasks

Every proposed change lands as a card in the cockpit, with the impact preview attached: work packages affected, owners to ping, gates that move, customer risk flagged. One click to confirm, correct, or defer.

MES, ERP, PLM data connected
Connectors
Plugged into your industrial stack.

MES, ERP, PLM, email, shared drives. Live data flowing in. Your systems of record stay where they are; the program gets the visibility.

Project notebook with full audit trail
Notebook
Audit trail and project notebook.

Every decision, every signal, every change — chronological, provenance-stamped, exportable. The trail an auditor wants. The story a customer asks for. Always ready.

The reports view, pre-filled
Reports
The reports view, pre-filled.

Weekly status drafts, monthly portfolio reviews, customer update emails — assembled from live program data and waiting for you. Open, scan, edit, send. Friday is back to being just Friday.

The five agents

Signals come in. State stays current.
Decisions surface for humans.

An agentic engine, not a chatbot. Continuous loop: ingest, maintain state, propose, confirm, learn. Nothing mutates your program without an explicit human click.

01 / Cleaner

Walks the project graph.

Continuously checks dates against dependencies, owners against org changes, gates against their checklist items, work packages against the parts they reference. Inconsistencies surfaced the moment they appear — not at 8pm on a Friday.

02 / Ingest

Turns signals into structure.

Parses inbound emails, supplier replies, BOMs, ECOs, EOL notices, PDFs, meeting notes, ERP and PLM deltas. Each signal becomes a structured proposed change, tied to the right work package, with provenance on every claim.

03 / Planner

Computes the cascade.

Reads each new signal against the program graph. Walks dependencies forward to find what it touches: downstream work packages, gates with related checklists, supplier qualifications, customer milestones. Outputs a proposal with the impact already mapped.

04 / Drafter

Generates in your shop's voice.

Learns from past comms and reports your team approved. Knows when to trigger: an EOL hits, a supplier goes silent, the weekly status is due. Pulls the right context. Hands you a draft to edit — not a blank page.

05 / Advisor

Pattern-matches the portfolio.

Reads patterns across your program history. Compares the active portfolio against past slip signatures. Surfaces the program where the pattern looks like a slip about to happen — even when no single signal would flag it.

How it works

From scattered files to coordinated programs in one day.

Most manufacturing ERPs take 12 to 24 months to deploy. PLM rollouts run 6 to 18 months. BlackOrbit runs your first program the same day you upload it.

01
Hour 1 · magic import

Upload the mess. BlackOrbit structures it.

Your PM drops in whatever the program lives on today — Excel trackers, action lists, SOWs, DFM responses, PDFs, meeting notes. BlackOrbit parses it all into a structured program: work packages, owners, dependencies, dates, gate reviews. No manual re-entry. No rigid template.

02
Same-day afternoon · team goes live

Invite contributors. They see what matters.

Engineering, operations, supply chain, quality — each one lands on their own actions, deadlines, and gate reviews, with the Advisor surfacing risks and what needs attention. One workspace, one source of truth, no "onboarding week" before anyone can do real work.

03
Week 2+, at your pace · signals online

Plug in the data sources. The loop closes.

Connect inboxes, shared folders, and integrations (ERP, PLM, MES) at your pace. The engine starts turning supplier emails, PDF replies, and ERP deltas into proposed changes in the Cockpit — with provenance on every one. Your program state stays current without anyone copy-pasting.

What changes

Outcomes your team feels in the first days.

−60%
Fewer coordination meetings

Status updates, alignment calls, "quick syncs" collapse when every owner, blocker, and decision lives in one shared view.

2×
PM efficiency

Program managers double their effective output. Less status chasing. More decisions made, more risks anticipated.

−40%
ECO cycle time

Change orders that used to take a week now close in days. The Planner Agent surfaces impact; the Drafter prepares the comms.

+1
Program in flight per PM

The leverage compounds. Your strongest PMs run an extra concurrent program without burning out.

What it's worth

The math if you run 6 NPI builds.

Deliberately conservative numbers. Run yours on the design partner call.

~2,100 hrs
Team time reclaimed per year
7 people × 3 hrs/week of coordination tax × 50 weeks × 6 programs × 1/3 capture. Deliberately conservative against the Cross / HBR collaborative-overload benchmark. The tax hits the whole team, not just the PM.
~$178K
Annual value of that time
2,100 hrs × $85/hr blended loaded cost. Reinvested into program coordination, DFM work, supplier qualification, FAI prep — the skilled work the team was hired for.
~$220K
Slip and issues avoided
The all-in cost of a single slipped milestone or major quality escape, by the time it's resolved: premium freight, overtime recovery, customer penalties, rework, and re-inspection. Your number varies by contract terms and program value. We'll build yours on the call.
Annual upside, one EMS supplier, 6 programs
~$400K / year of recaptured value
How BlackOrbit compares

The gap every other category leaves open.

The electronics PM software landscape is split: heavy incumbents, generic work tools, or narrow shop-floor apps. BlackOrbit is the layer none of them cover.

Capability Manufacturing ERP Generic PM PLM MES BlackOrbit
Full project management actions, owners, threads, cross-functional ~ ✓ ~ × ✓
Project & resource planning Gantt, WBS, dependencies, critical path ~ ✓ ~ × ✓
Stage-gate sign-offs AS9102, PPAP, DFM, custom + full traceability ~ × ~ ~ ✓
Agentic engine — project administration removes ~80% of project admin × × × × ✓
Agentic engine — inbound & outbound comms emails & PDFs in; customer / supplier drafts out × × × × ✓
Portfolio-level risk & NPI advisor cycle-time, bottlenecks, predictions ~ × × × ✓
Manufacturing ontology, native + customizable part hierarchies, work packages, AS9102 / PPAP / DFM, FAI, NCR — built in, tunable to your shop ✓ ~ ~ ~ ✓
1-day go-live with magic import Excel, PDF, SOW → structured program × ~ × × ✓
Industrial deployment ITAR-ready, integrates with ERP / PLM / MES ✓ ~ ~ ✓ ✓
Design partner application

Shape v1 with us. Gain an unfair edge on every electronics program you ship.

4 spots open · Electronics design partner cohort
Still have questions? Read the FAQ ↓

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We read every submission ourselves. If there's a fit, you'll hear from a founder within 48 hours with two time slots for an intro call.

What you get as a design partner
  • Direct influence over v1 roadmap and the data model
  • Dedicated engineering pair embedded with your program team
  • Locked-in founder pricing — substantially below list for your first two years
  • 30-minute intro call, NDA-backed — you walk away with a coordination teardown either way
Frequently asked

Answers for electronics operations leaders.

How is BlackOrbit different from our ERP?
Manufacturing ERPs are systems of record built for transactions: inventory, BOMs, work orders, resource plans. BlackOrbit runs in parallel as the coordination layer for the program itself. We integrate with your ERP so it stays the source of truth on transactions, while we own the cross-functional coordination from PO accepted to first qualified board shipped.
How is BlackOrbit different from our PLM?
PLMs own the product definition — BOM revisions, ECO records, CAD ties. BlackOrbit owns the program around them: who's blocked, which DFM question is open, what changed in the BOM that the test team hasn't seen yet, which supplier hasn't responded. PLM stays your system of record on product data. BlackOrbit becomes the program coordination layer around it.
How does BlackOrbit handle BOM and ECO volatility on electronics NPI?
BOM and ECO velocity is the failure mode the platform was built for. The Ingest Agent parses incoming supplier emails, EOL notices, and ECO records. The Planner Agent watches for downstream impact — DFM open items, test plan changes, AVL substitutions, qualification implications — and proposes concrete action items. Nothing changes without a human confirm.
Is BlackOrbit ITAR-ready?
Yes. Built with the access controls, data residency, and audit requirements for defense electronics manufacturers handling ITAR-controlled or CUI data. For ITAR programs we host on an ITAR-compliant cloud on request.
How quickly can we get live?
A program is live in one day. Upload whatever your program lives on today — Excel BOMs, SOWs, action lists, PDFs — and we parse it into a structured program. Contributors are landed by end of day. Connectors (email, ERP, PLM, MES, shared drives) plug in at your pace afterward.
Do the agents change our data automatically?
No. Every agent action lands in the Cockpit for a human to confirm, correct, or defer. Nothing mutates your plan, sends an email, or updates a status without an explicit click. The agents propose; the human decides. Confirmations and corrections train the engine on your shop's language and judgment.
What does the engine learn about our shop?
Naming conventions, stage gate definitions, BOM and AVL patterns, supplier behavior, customer escalation patterns, your shop's vocabulary on DFM, FAI, NCR, IPC inspection categories. Over time the proposed actions look more and more like what your senior PM would have written.