Sens-Tech has engaged Dynamic EMS to help establish and maintain its competitive edge since 2005. Dynamic EMS provides a flexible service to meet Sens-Techs demanding lead times and pricing criteria across a broad range of products. Equipment manufactured by Dynamic EMS includes data acquisition systems for use with large numbers of X-ray sensors, and linear X-ray sensors in radiation-screened housings for industrial applications. In all, there are some 35 product lines with volumes ranging from 100 to 1500-off per month.
Their production requires a mix of conventional and surface-mount-BGA techniques, and with around 70 different PCB assemblies involved, the supply chains are highly dynamic. Says Steve Jaye of Sens-Tech: The technical capability of Dynamic-EMS has always matched our business requirements well, across a wide variety of circuit boards and final products.
Dynamic-EMSs 43,000 sq ft facility in Dunfermline, Scotland, includes three surface-mount assembly lines, capable of up to 75000 component placements per hour. In addition to multi-zone ovens for conventional soldering, there is a ten-zone reflow oven for lead-free processes, and comprehensive inspection and rework facilities to match. For Sens-Techs conventional through hole and mixed technology PCB assembly needs, facilities include a 60-station sequencer with capacity for up to 10000 insertions/hour and an 8000 insertions/hour DIP inserter.
With customers spanning the security, industrial and medical sectors, Sens-Techs pricing has to be keen; yet quality cannot be compromised. Crucial for Sens-Tech was the ability to offer a lower-volume line where products under development could be assembled in order to evaluate new markets and customers. These prototype products are sensitively priced so that customers like Sens-tech can achieve the correct costing structure to penetrate new markets.
Competitiveness is crucial not just to the demanding electronics assembly process itself, but all the way down the supply chain. Dynamic EMS Materials Group provides a broad range of services to Sens-Tech, drawn from its experience across material sourcing and procurement, supply chain management, component selection, inventory management, component obsolescence and lead-time profiling.
Explains Steve Jaye: They use the approach that is most appropriate to your business needs. For us, they provided a number of supply chain methodologies that support our product portfolio through all aspects of supplier selection and supply chain management. Working very closely with their supply chain partners, Dynamics excellent project management and always-helpful approach has been the key to achieving our difficult timescales and price requirements.
And there is more to the partnership than that. Where Sens-Tech is concerned, partnership with an electronics manufacturing service provider is too important to rely on technical capability, project management and supply chain expertise alone. We tend to place contracts with people rather than companies, affirms Jaye. The key account people at Dynamic EMS, Paula Scotland(programme manager) and John Dignan (sales director), have been extremely helpful throughout our relationship, working very closely with suppliers — and with our personnel from the top-down and bottom-up.
Its an integral element of the company philosophy, as Dynamic EMS Dignan acknowledges: We first worked with Sens-Tech in 2005 and have engaged at all levels ever since. We build trusting working relationships with a common goal of satisfying the needs of both Sens-Tech and their end-customers.
Proof, if needed, that electronics manufacturing services is as much a people business as it is technical and commercial.