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Relyent Offers Quick-turn Prototyping; Legacy Electronics Adds SMT Equipment, Production Line, Personnel; Dage Adds X-ray Inspection
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Relyent Offers Quick-turn PrototypingHILLSBORO, Ore. Relyent Inc., a new custom assembly services provider, is offering a unique service: quick-turn prototyping and low-volume PCB assembly and modification.
"There is an incredible need in the industry for rapid development of low-volume assemblies and prototypes," said John Shurr, president of Relyent. "I know because I was responsible for finding vendors to prototype small quantities of my former employers' boards, and I could find no one who provided, much less specialized in, such a service. We often had our engineers assembling boards because there was simply no available alternative."
Industry reaction to the services reportedly has been favorable thus far. Recent customers include Intel and Shimadzu. Relyent also secured manufacturers' representatives in many major industrial regions, a rarity.
Shurr sees a large market potential for his company's service. "Based on our research, in the U.S. PCB production market alone, there are more than 5,000 manufacturers contracting for $3.5 billion in custom and hand built work. With a little more investment in equipment and marketing, we feel we can capture a significant percentage of that business."
Legacy Electronics Adds SMT Equipment, Production Line, PersonnelSAN CLEMENTE, Calif. In an attempt to meet growing demand for its patent-pending, three-dimensional (3-D) printed circuit board (PCB) subassembly product, Canopy, and to offer customers additional surface mount capabilities and flexibilities, Legacy Electronics purchased and installed a third automated production line. Also included is additional SMT manufacturing and automated test equipment.
In addition to their design and engineering services, Legacy has been providing all surface mount assembly services, including ball grid array (BGA) and automated test services, since their expansion and $3 million equipment purchases last September. The newly purchased Philips Gem platform parallel processing equipment and Speedline MPM stencil printer now allow Legacy to add a third production line.
"Utilizing the Philips platform reduces training time, and allows us to easily move programs between machines," said Legacy President, Jason Engle. "Essentially, we enhance throughput and flexibility and increase yield for our customers."
Also in the last several months, Legacy added a new COO, Eric Uhlenhoff, and a new CFO, Bill Benz.
Dage Adds X-ray InspectionFREEMONT, Calif. Dage Precision Industries is offering X-ray inspection systems for use by semiconductor manufacturers and electronics companies undertaking PCB assembly to complement the company's previous bond testing equipment. Dage's move into this area follows the company's acquisition of German X-ray tube manufacturer MediXtec GmbH. Merged under the name Dage MediXtec, the new operation will supply the newly developed X-ray inspection equipment as well as X-ray tubes to OEMs worldwide.
"Complementing our involvement in bond testing, the move into X-ray inspection is a logical step, and one that offers us significant and very exciting business opportunities," said Paul Walter, managing director. "The market for X-ray systems for electronics inspection applications currently stands around $100 million a year and, fuelled by the increasing use of component packages such as BGAs and CSPs with their hidden solder joints, is set to grow to $450 million a year over the next five years."
Dage MediXtec's initial range of X-ray inspection systems comprises three similar models, all of which employ open (demountable) microfocus X-ray tubes, and provide a highly magnified all-round oblique-angle view of otherwise invisible interconnection bonds or other features of interest.
BridgePoint V.P. Provides Global ExperienceAUSTIN, Texas BridgePoint Technical Manufacturing named Miles A. Prim vice president of Strategic Development. He will work with the BridgePoint management team on the strategic business and expansion plans from Phoenix.
"Miles will help outline our strategy to meet the growing demand for domestic outsource test services," said Joe Jones, president and CEO of BridgePoint. "With more than 20 years in the semiconductor test and assembly areas, Miles will deliver value to our existing customers and cultivate relationships with new ones."
With 23 years of global background, Prim last served as vice president of Worldwide Test for Amkor Technology. During his nine years there, he was credited with building and managing multiple areas of the package, assembly and test business in Asia.
"I approached BridgePoint for the opportunity to grow with the largest domestic test outsourcing company in North America," said Prim. "I look forward to bringing the benefits of competitive outsourcing of package assembly, board assembly and test to domestic semiconductor operations across North America."
EMI Expands AssemblySANTA ANA, Calif. Express Manufacturing Inc. (EMI), an electronics manufacturing services provider, significantly expanded its prototype assembly capabilities with a new dedicated prototype facility. Designed to enable high-volume production, the facility benefits customers with quick-turn prototype manufacturing and faster product design validation.
The new facility will feature state-of-the-art equipment to efficiently handle the additional volume. Prototype assembly services will be completed under one roof, from the receipt of kitted materials through product finishing, including SMT and through-hole processes. EMI will have a 36-member production staff dedicated full time to this operation.
"EMI's new prototype facility allows us to scale to handle the additional volume generated by our customers," said C.P. Chin, president. "Our goal is to shorten their time-to-market by allowing faster product design validation and entry into full production. In addition, we will use our expertise to provide customers with rapid feedback on the manufacturability of the product design."
Lexmark Selects SoftwareCAMPBELL, Calif. Lexmark International will use Camstar Systems Inc.'s InSite e-manufacturing system at four of its production faculties within its worldwide manufacturing network. The sites now running under InSite include three in Lexington, Ky. and one in Reynosa, Mexico.
By managing production through multiple plants and processes, providing visibility into material status worldwide, Camstar's InSite provides a common, flexible, Internet-based application for managing Lexmark's distributed manufacturing operations. The manufacturing of inkjet cartridges for Lexmark's line of computer printers is an extremely high-volume operation, with some of the plants producing upwards of
10 million units per year. Key to Lexmark's selection of InSite was its ability to scale to that level of transaction volume, while capturing the complete manufacturing history for each individual cartridge produced.
Continuous quality control was another major consideration. "Not only do we produce [PCBs] that go into our own printer products, but we produce these boards in large volume for other manufacturers who then build them into their own products," said Todd Sills, InSite project leader for Lexmark. "For those external customers, product quality and responsive customer service are key differentiators in what is, essentially, a commodity market."
As another benefit, InSite implementation already is reducing scrap significantly. "InSite lets us correlate cartridges rejected during testing with historic records of link lots machinery and other parts of the production process that may contribute to the rejection rate. We are estimating that we could realize dollar savings of more than $1 million annually if we were to reduce scrap by as little as one half of one percent," said Sills.
Honeywell Selects MSLCONCORD, Mass. Manufacturers' Services Ltd. (MSL) has been chosen by Honeywell Aerospace Electronics Systems to provide manufacturing services for circuit card assemblies used in high-end electronics products for commercial and private aviation. Honeywell's system control, navigation and display systems are used in aircrafts worldwide.
"Partnering with MSL enhances Aerospace Electronics Systems' ability to focus on developing superior products and to maintain its competitive edge in the global marketplace," said Prentis Wilson, Aerospace Electronic Systems' supply chain manager for manufactured electronics in Phoenix.
MSL will offer a full range of electronics design, test and production services for Honeywell at its advanced manufacturing center in Arden Hills, Minn., specializing in complex, high-mix electronics manufacturing. The company will offer new product introduction services, including design for manufacturability, in-circuit test and turnkey PCB assembly. MSL will leverage its integrated supply chain to ensure material availability and competitive pricing.
In other MSL news, Curtσ Wozniak was elected to the board of directors. The appointment expands the board of directors to eight members. Wozniak currently is the chairman and CEO of Electroglas Inc., an automated wafer probing product supplier.
NetVendor and Manugistics AlignROCKVILLE, Md. and ATLANTA Manugistics Group Inc., a provider of Enterprise Profit Optimization solutions, and NetVendor, a provider of Internet software and services for collaborative business-to-business suppliers, have announced a strategic alliance to deliver enhanced capabilities for Manugistics' Web-based order planning, management and execution solution for Global 2000 companies.
Under the alliance, Manugistics will embed NetVendor's E.MBRACE sell-side software with Manugistics NetWORKS. The result will provide an integrated end-to-end order planning, management and execution system that allows companies to deploy a single system to manage new and existing sales channels. Planned joint sales and marketing activities will draw upon the two companies' respective strengths across key industry verticals.
"NetVendor's strength lies in providing collaboration, configuration and design capabilities to highly complex vertical markets," said Steve Ely, COO of NetVendor. "Manugistic's selection of NetVendor's E.MBRACE sell-side solution will help provide front-end order management to its Enterprise Profit Optimization solution, giving users a comprehensive set of tools for collaborating with customers and managing their supply chain."
Lori Mitchell-Keller, vice president of technology strategy for Manugistics, added, "We expect the Manugistics-NetVendor alliance to support our commitment to fulfilling buyer and seller needs across the enterprise and eMarketplaces."