Manufacturing and Engineering Magazine Volume 420 - September 2015 | Page 16
speedboard.qxp_feature 2 31/07/2015 10:40 Page 14
MANUFACTURING & ENGINEERING SPEEDBOARD
FROM
STRENGTH
TO STRENGTH
Never shying from investments that keep you ahead of manufacturing
challenges, the formation of risk-sharing relationships with your customers
plus an unwavering Can Do attitude: Speedboard’s three main philosophies result
in sustained growth, says Sales & Marketing Director, Nick Fairhead.
4
Established in 1983, Speedboard
Assembly Services is a Contract
Electronics Manufacture (CEM)
with a difference. It specialises in
serving customers in a variety of
high-tech sectors, including Industrial,
Defence, Medical, Communications and
Security. It offers a broad range of manufacturing services which range from traditional
build-to-print through to full lifecycle,
including DFM, prototyping, full production,
packaging, delivery to end customer, repairs
and after sales support.
Granted, several other CEMs offer the
same services, but how many closed their
year-end books 23% up on the previous year?
Speedboard did: £9.2m in FY2014/15 compared to £7.5m the year before. And how
many CEMs spent in excess of £250,000 on
equipment last year? Speedboard did. And
how many CEMs are attracting increasing volumes of work back to the UK from the Far
East? Speedboard is: the volume of its reshored work doubled last year, and now
accounts for about 10% of turnover.
Moreover, Speedboard is achieving
growth – from existing and new customers –
within a total sales market that grew by only
3.9% last year, according to the latest Plimsoll
Report. So what is Speedboard doing differently?
14
The company’s success is largely attributable to the fact that Speedboard is privatelyowned and that two of its directors are former customers. This enables decisions to be
made quickly and decisively when it comes to
investing in equipment that will enhance
board quality. For instance, in 2014, it was
recognised that an up-coming and complex
assembly project for a valued customer would
benefit from Vapour Phase reflow soldering,
and the decision was taken to purchase a
Vapour Phase oven. Then, earlier this year, it
was recognised that a project for another customer warranted investment in a Selective
Soldering line (pictured right).
The Vapour Phase oven and Selective
Soldering machine, which represent a combined cap-ex in the region of £200,000, complement Speedboard’s other equipment. This
includes five SMT lines which, between them,
The company’s success is
largely attributable to
the fact that Speedboard
is privately-owned and
that two of its directors
are former customers.
MANUFACTURING AND ENGINEERING MAGAZINE
comprise 15 Siemens SiPlace machines. The
company also has a dedicated offline prototyping area, with standalone solder paste and
pick & place machines, and all the test capabilities you’d expect of a CEM.
However, it’s not all about having the right
equipment. Customer relations are also at
the heart of Speedboard’s
success.
For
instance,
Speedboard and its customer Vocality, which specialises in bandwidth optimisation and network interconnectivity
solutions,
recently established a partnership
with
virtually
unheard of levels of cooperation and openness.
Early on in the relationship, Speedboard appraised
Vocality’s entire orderreceived-to-goods-shipped
lifecycle, identifying how
processes
could
be
improved and waste eliminated in order to provide
Vocality’s
customers
with
reduced lead-times. Two different
Kanban systems were introduced at the
CEM’s recommendation plus Speedboard has
given Vocality high visibility of its manufac-