Five Years and Counting

Time flies when you are having fun and we almost missed our five year anniversary. Our website went live fine years ago this week! It's been a wild ride since then - fast growth, new technologies, a new building, more machines, more people, more customers...

We couldn't have done it without all of you customers and we really appreciate your loyalty and candor. You've been with us when things have been going well and you've been clear with us when things haven't gone so well. We also had a lot of help from our board fab partner www.sunstone.com.

The way we were:

Duane Benson
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot

Spock Help Me Find A Product Manager

Well, it wasn't actually Spock. It was Leonard Nimoy and the TV show "In Search of..." sought out things much more interesting then new employees. Well, unless you happen to be a good product manager and are looking for a new job at a fast growing company.

If you are such person (we're looking for a few other folks too), jump over to our jobs page and see what's up.

Maybe if I can get some more help here, I'll be able to get back to more regular blog posting. That would be a good thing. Even better, if any of you have any cool and or interesting and useful tidbits, try and write up a guest blog post. If you want to give that a try, email it to marketing@screamingcircuits.com. I'll take a look and see it if fits.

Duane Benson

Thank you!

We do our best to fill this blog with helpful information and minimize the glurgy stuff, but sometimes, we do talk about ourselves. We've been a little lean on posts lately anyway so I suppose a little self-serving filler is okay.

We recently received two Service Excellence awards from Circuits Assembly magazine. We say "Thank you" to all of you because the award winners were selected based on a survey with some of you and we really appreciate your kind words.

We won in the "Manufacturing Quality" and "Technology" categories. That makes us feel pretty good because we know both of those topics are very important to all of you. We do sometimes have problems, but we try our best to always keep what you folks need at the top of our minds. If we do have problems, we try our best to make it right for you and learn from it.

The awards are cool, but what we really care about is how we are doing for you guys every day. Please feel free, any time or place, to call or email us (or comment here) and let us know if you have any questions or concerns at all.

Duane Benson
Thank you from all of us here at Screaming Circuits.

Eagle CAD and Sunstone

Our pcb fab partners up the road just released a set of design rule files (.DRU) files for use with the Eagle schematic and PCB layout editor. The design rules set allows Eagle users to consider Sunstone's manufacturing rules early on in the layout phase and that's a good thing.

Simply download, install and activate the design rule file and then Eagle will automatically let you know if your board layout will work or if specific areas need to be changed.

You can get the design rule file at the Eagle CAD website or directly off the Sunstone website at: http://www.sunstone.com/pcb-resources/Downloads.aspx. You can also download Sunstone's CAD software, PCB123, from the same page. Scroll down to find the design rules.

Duane Benson

Introductions

We like to give tours here at Screaming Circuits. Unfortunately, we can't give too many tours because then we'd be spending all our time showing the place instead of building boards. Also, most of you don't live here so you can't get by to drop in.

Still, even if we can't have you all over for a tour and a soda, we want you to get to know us a bit better. For the last eight weeks in a row, we've delivered 100% of your assembly jobs on time. We've had 100% on-time delivery in 12 of the last 13 weeks. That kind of performance is due in large part to the customer service folks whom you speak with on the phone and via email.

Here's a brief introduction to a couple of them.

Now you know a couple of the people who are working for you in here. And you know why some of those packing peanuts might be a little squished. Don't worry. They were sealed in protective plastic at the time.

Duane Benson
We're still afraid of bears.

Good PCB CAD Software

Here's a scenario we run across reasonably frequently. It happens to a lot of different types of folks. First, there's the small company engineer. He or she has to design a board and get it out the door with pretty much no budget. Then, you might have a seasoned EE at a large company suddenly tasked with more than just the phase locked loop design. Now the project also requires designing the rest of the board, the layout and the prototyping. Oh, and by the way, there isn't a budget for buying another seat on the big CAD system.

Enter PCB123. You might know them as Sunstone Circuits. If not that, then you might have used them as PCBexpress. All the same company. Probably half or more of our customers buy their pc boards from Sunstone. They always give us (and more importantly, our customers) great service. They're just up the road from us so we can get things back and forth quickly too.

Back to the subject at hand - PCB123 is a free to download and easy to use but powerful schematic capture and PCB layout package. It also automates the process of board quoting and ordering. Yes, it does require that you purchase the finished boards from them, but we'd recommend you do that anyway. If you get your boards from PCB123 and your assembly from us, all you have to do is tell them in the special instructions to send the boards to us.

They are a different company than we are so you do have to quote the assembly with us separately, but it's really easy to do. Give the PCB123 folks your screaming circuits order number and tell us the boards are coming from them. Ship us your parts kit (or have us order them for you as a turn-key) and you don't have to worry about the boards. When they are all fabbed up, PCB123 will send the boards and necessary files directly to us and we'll ship you the completed assemblies. Cool.

Duane Benson
Software is fun

On Time Delivery at Screaming Circuits

While most of the posts in this blog are more related to pcb design, assembly and the environment engineers live in, I wanted to mention something about the culture we have here at Screaming Circuits.  We just finished August, traditionally a month of vacations (at least in Europe), when things tend to be a little slower at work.

We had an above average month, our volume of orders was slightly better than expected.  It was not a record month for us, but was within 10% of our best and we were busy.  Last month was particularly nice for us because we had 99.5% on time delivery.  Just to put that differently, that is 1 order late in 200 orders.  We are very proud of our on time delivery, and show the importance of that to our customers with our delivery policy, where we refund 50% of your order if we are 1 day late, and 100% if we are 2 days late with shipment.

Great job to the team here at Screaming Circuits and we hope that you customers will continue to reward us for performing with more work!

Thank you,

Jered

There is only one...

Comments From Customers

A good Saturday morning can be used for sleeping in or it can be used for reflecting on the past week. Maybe both. I'll sort of take both. I did sleep in a bit and I'm going to spend some time reflecting on the past. We send out a survey form with each order we assemble. I'm paging through the stack, like I do periodically, to see how we're doing.

The most valuable comments we get are those that come in when something doesn't go as well as we would like. Those are the ones that help us improve our service.

Following are a number of comments taken off of these surveys and some of my related thoughts.

• "Excellent job over several orders."
• "Excellent customer service. Thanks Chris."
• "We are very impressed with you quick turn around and quality work. We'll be using you again in the future."

That's always nice to hear. We get a lot like this, but I'm skipping all of the positive comments except the three above. The rest are about things that we could do to improve the experience or about quality improvements we have needed to make.

• "More status updates on web would be nice feature."

That would be nice. Right now, we update the web order status (on your MY ACCOUNTS page) when the order is placed and confirmed, when we receive the kit and when the order ships. We've got a system improvement that we are currently working on that will give a lot more detail about where your job is in our shop. I'm not sure when it will be implemented, but probably within the next two months.

• "The boards weren't very clean, had solder flux on them. The hand soldered parts weren't very straight or even with the board's edge lines."

We use no-clean flux so usually, this isn't a problem. Sometimes, though there is more residue that we or our customers would like to see. We send notes like this back to our floor. They'll take a look and see if there is additional training or process improvements that we can implement. Sometimes though, given that we are working on prototypes, we don't pay as much attention to cosmetics as an individual might. We make sure the function and reliability are there and that the solder joints and things meet up to IPC-A-610.

• "My only issue was trying to pay with a Purchase Order. It was not clear (on the website) how to do this. I spoke with someone on the phone who explained it in just a few minutes. Its was easy!"

You're right. It isn't very clear on the website. We do tell you about our policy on credit terms, but it's hidden in our FAQ page. That's a bit of trickery. I could just say what our policy on POs and getting Terms is, but I'd rather give you the opportunity to see it in our FAQ and then browse around a bit.

• "It can be confusing when parts are re-sealed in packaging without updating quantity."

Good point. I'm not sure we've thought of this issue before. Again, this is one I'll pass back to the shop floor. When we get more parts than we need, we do reseal them back into the original bags - especially if they are moisture sensitive parts.

• "Add a way to reorder from the past 'order summary' page."

Another very good suggestion. This is something we are talking through. We do have the capability to do this when we place an order for you over the telephone. We keep the solder stencil for 30 days, so if you reorder within that time, you can even get a discount for the stencil charge. The caution, of course, is that if anything has changed, it's not the same order and we have to treat it as a new one, including ordering a new stencil.

• "Some pins on the through-hole connectors were not soldered. Flux was left on the board. Kudos for completing our boards ahead of schedule!"

Gyarrr! I hate it when that happens. There really isn't an excuse for not soldering pins and ahead of schedule is worthless if it isn't right. Again, this note went back to the floor. This comment came in back in February and I don't think we've had this happen since. See my earlier note on the flux.

It is very important to us that we build your boards the way you want them and when you want them. That's why we're here and why we strive to be the best at this. If things don't go as well as you would like, tell us. If it's an immediate problem, call us (866)784-5887 or email us. Otherwise, just fill out the survey form and fax it back to us.

Duane Benson

The Rest of the Story

Screaming Circuits assembles prototypes and some small volume production pc boards. We put electronic components on printed circuits boards and [Danger Will Robinson: ego alert] we think we are one of the best in the Industry. If you combine our technology with our engineer friendly approach, we think we may even be the best. This post isn't about a possibly over inflated ego though, it's about what is behind our little prototype pcb assembly world.

We have a parent company, Milwaukee Electronics Companies (MEC). MEC has been building mid-volume production for more than 50 years. They do everything from simple pcb assembly on up to complete box-build.

One of our sister divisions within the Milwaukee Electronics family is a design firm called MEC Innovation. MEC Innovation takes on concept-to-production jobs, schematic design jobs, project management jobs and pc board layout. They have a pretty wide range of expertise, but if I had to tag a specialty, it would probably be in industrial control and motion control.

Getting a quote is not in the remotest sense an automated process like assembly is with Screaming Circuits, but if you need help with design or layout, give us a call or shoot us an email and we will connect you up with them. You can also check out MEC Innovation directly on their website.

Duane Benson
He's not heavy, he's a division of my parent company