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Benchmark Electronics, Inc. - Contract
Manufacturing - Category Directory
3000
Technology Drive
Angleton, Texas 77515
(979) 849-6550
www.benchmark.com
Sales
$1.8
billion
Business Description
We
are in the business of manufacturing electronics and provide our services to
original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of computers and related products
for business enterprises, medical devices, industrial control equipment,
testing and instrumentation products, and telecommunication equipment. The
services that we provide are commonly referred to as electronics
manufacturing services (EMS). We offer our customers comprehensive and
integrated design and manufacturing services, from initial product design to
volume production and direct order fulfillment. We also provide specialized
engineering services, including product design, printed circuit board
layout, prototyping and test development. We believe that we have developed
strengths in the manufacturing process for large, complex, high-density
printed circuit boards as well as the ability to manufacture high and low
volume products in lower cost regions such as Latin and South America and
Southeast Asia.
As our customers expand internationally, they increasingly require their EMS
partners to have strategic regional locations and global procurement
capabilities. We believe that our global manufacturing presence of 16
facilities in eight countries increases our ability to be responsive to our
customers' needs by providing accelerated time-to-market and time-to-volume
production of high quality products. These capabilities should enable us to
build stronger strategic relationships with our customers and to become a
more integral part of their operations. Our customers face challenges in
planning, procuring and managing their inventories efficiently due to
fluctuations in customer demand, product design changes, short product life
cycles and component price fluctuations. We employ production management
systems to manage their procurement and manufacturing processes in an
efficient and cost-effective manner so that, where possible, components
arrive on a just-in-time, as-and-when needed basis. We are a significant
purchaser of electronic components and other raw materials, and can
capitalize on the economies of scale associated with our relationships with
suppliers to negotiate price discounts, obtain components and other raw
materials that are in short supply, and return excess components. Our
expertise in supply chain management and our relationships with suppliers
across the supply chain enables us to reduce our customers' cost of goods
sold and inventory exposure.
We currently operate, on approximately 2.0 million square feet, a total of
50 surface mount production lines (where electrical components are soldered
directly onto printed circuit boards) at our domestic facilities in Alabama,
Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington;
and 55 surface mount production lines at our international facilities in
Brazil, China, England, Ireland, Mexico, Singapore and Thailand.
Our capabilities have continued to grow through acquisitions and through
internal expansion. Since 1999, we have completed four acquisitions that
have broadened our service offerings, diversified our customer base with
leading OEMs and expanded our geographic presence. Our most recent
acquisition, the July 2002 acquisition of ACT Manufacturing (Thailand)
Public Company Limited and ACT Manufacturing Holdings UK Limited, provided
us with additional manufacturing capacity in Thailand and England. Our
October 2000 acquisition of the assets of the MSI Division of Outreach
Technologies, Inc. provided us with additional manufacturing capacity in the
northeastern United States. Our August 1999 acquisition of AVEX Electronics,
Inc. and Kilbride Holdings B.V. provided us with a global presence and
enabled us to increase our scale of operations and expand our customer base
significantly. In 1999, we also acquired certain assets from Stratus
Computer Ireland, which improved our engineering capabilities, increased our
manufacturing capacity and expanded our international presence.
Additionally, we have expanded our relationships with certain customers
during 2003 and added two new systems integration facilities in Loveland,
Colorado and Redmond, Washington. In 2002, we opened a new printed circuit
board assembly facility in Suzhou, China that began production during 2003.
We believe our primary competitive advantages are our design, manufacturing,
testing and supply chain management capabilities. We offer our customers
flexible manufacturing solutions through out the life cycle of their
products. These solutions provide accelerated time-to-market, time-to-volume
production, and reduced production costs. As a result of working closely
with our customers and responding promptly to their needs, we have become an
integral part of their operations. In addition, our workforce is led by a
management team that founded the Company and has an average of 22 years of
industry experience.
Our Industry
The EMS industry experienced rapid change and growth over most of the past
decade as an increasing number of OEMs outsourced their manufacturing
requirements. In mid-2001, the industry's revenue declined as a result of
significant cut backs in its customers' production requirements, which was
consistent with the overall global economic downturn. Nonetheless, OEMs have
continued to turn to outsourcing in order to reduce product cost; achieve
accelerated time-to-market and time-to-volume production; access advanced
design and manufacturing technologies; improve inventory management and
purchasing power; and reduce their capital investment in manufacturing
resources. This enables OEMs to concentrate on what they believe to be their
core strengths, such as new product definition, marketing and sales.
Industry revenues have slowly begun to increase again over the last year as
customer production requirements generally began to stabilize. We believe
further growth opportunities exist for EMS providers to penetrate the
worldwide electronics markets.
Services We Provide
Engineering. Our approach is to coordinate and integrate our design,
prototype and other engineering capabilities. Through this approach, we
provide a broad range of engineering services and, in some cases, dedicated
production lines for prototypes. These services strengthen our relationships
with manufacturing customers and attract new customers requiring specialized
engineering services.
To assist customers with initial design, we offer computer assisted
engineering, computer assisted design, engineering for manufacturability,
circuit board layout and test development. We also coordinate industrial
design and tooling for product manufacturing. After product design, we offer
quickturn prototyping, which means a rapid process of prototyping. During
this process, we assist with the transition to volume production. By
participating in product design and prototype development, we can reduce
manufacturing costs and accelerate the cycle from product introduction to
large-scale production.
Supply Chain Management. Supply chain management consists of the planning,
purchasing, expediting and warehousing of components and materials. Our
inventory management and volume procurement capabilities contribute to cost
reductions and reduce total cycle time. Our materials strategy is focused on
leveraging our procurement volume company wide while providing local
execution for maximum flexibility at the division level. In addition, our
systems integration facilities have developed material processes required to
support system integration operations.
Assembly and Manufacturing. Our manufacturing and assembly operations
include printed circuit boards and subsystem assembly, box build and systems
integration, the process of integrating sub-systems and downloading software
before producing a fully configured product. We purchase the printed circuit
boards used in our assembly operations from third parties. A substantial
portion of our sales is derived from the manufacture and assembly of
complete products. We employ various inventory management techniques, such
as just-in-time, ship-to-stock and autoreplenish, which are programs
designed to ensure timely, convenient and efficient delivery of assembled
products to our customers. As OEMs seek to provide greater functionality in
smaller products, they increasingly require more sophisticated manufacturing
technologies and processes. Our investment in advanced manufacturing
equipment and our experience in innovative packaging and interconnect
technologies enable us to offer a variety of advanced manufacturing
solutions. These packaging and interconnect technologies include:
• chip scale packaging, the part of semiconductor manufacturing in which the
semiconductor die is bonded and sealed into a ceramic or plastic package
which physically protects the semiconductor device; and
• ball grid array, a method of attaching components to a printed circuit
board through balls of solder that are arranged in a grid pattern.
Testing. We offer computer-aided testing of assembled printed circuit
boards, subsystems and systems, which contributes significantly to our
ability to deliver high-quality products on a consistent basis. We work with
our customers to develop product-specific test strategies. Our test
capabilities include manufacturing defect analysis, in-circuit tests to test
the circuitry of the board and functional tests to confirm that the board or
assembly operates in accordance with its final design and manufacturing
specifications. We either custom design test equipment and software
ourselves or use test equipment and software provided by our customers. In
addition, we provide environmental stress tests of assemblies of boards or
systems.
Final System Assembly and Test. We provide final system assembly and test in
which assemblies and modules are combined to form complete, finished
products. We often integrate printed circuit board assemblies manufactured
by us with enclosures, electronic and mechanical subassemblies, cables and
memory modules. We assemble systems to a specific customer order and we also
build to standard configurations. The complex, finished products that we
produce typically require extensive test protocols. Our test services
include both functional and environmental tests. We also test products for
conformity to applicable industry, product integrity and regulatory
standards. Our test engineering expertise enables us to design functional
test processes that assess critical performance elements, including
hardware, software and reliability. By incorporating rigorous test processes
into the manufacturing process, we can help to assure customers that their
products will function as designed. We provide direct order fulfillment
services shipping completed systems directly to the end consumer.
Distribution. We offer our customers flexible, just-in-time delivery
programs allowing product shipments to be closely coordinated with
customers' inventory requirements. Increasingly, we ship products directly
into customers' distribution channels or directly to the end-user. We
believe that this service can provide our customers with a more
comprehensive solution and enable them to be more responsive to market
demands.
Direct Order Fulfillment. We provide direct order fulfillment for certain of
our OEM customers. Direct order fulfillment involves receiving customer
orders, configuring products to quickly fill the orders and delivering the
products either to the OEM, a distribution channel or directly to the end
customer. We manage our direct order fulfillment processes using a core set
of common systems and processes that receive order information from the
customer and provide comprehensive supply chain management, including
procurement and production planning. These systems and processes enable us
to process orders for multiple system configurations, and varying production
quantities, including single units. Our direct order fulfillment services
include build-to-order (BTO) and configure-to-order (CTO) capabilities. BTO
involves building a system having the particular configuration ordered by
the OEM customer. CTO involves configuring systems to an end customer's
order. The end customer typically places this order by choosing from a
variety of possible system configurations and options. We are capable of
meeting a 48 to 72 hour turn-around-time for BTO and CTO by using advanced
manufacturing processes. We support our direct order fulfillment services
with logistics that include delivery of parts and assemblies to the final
assembly site, distribution and shipment of finished systems, and processing
of customer returns.
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