In the past 13 years we have seen substantial growth in the EMS or Contract Manufacturing industry. This segment of the manufacturing market has provided a significant amount of support to the electronics community that help start up companies exist without heavy fixed capital.  Approximately 50% of our customer base is made up of CMs that heavy invest in capital equipment and other resources to service a variety of customers.

The great advantage to the electronic start ups and entrepreneurs is the ability to for their engineers to design a product and turn it over to a CM without a huge capital investment in manufacturing equipment.  Of course, this is the obvious but pricing and labor advantages here in the U.S. are sometimes better outsourced due to the highly competitive nature of the contract manufacturing world.  We see a lot our OEM customers who do prototype work with us hand assemble their boards and then outsource their production.

It goes without saying that all our Contract Manufacturing customers are highly skilled in their area of expertise.  One of our customers, a CM in Utah, is known for having the top SMT engineers in the entire state.  Their high quality is consistently known throughout the state and with customers that we sell printed circuit boards to. Most of these companies can do prototypes, production volume, high mix, low mix, rigid and flex circuits…anything Tier 2, Tier 3 and start-up customers need. In fact, they have engineering resources for PCB Array layout and design that will help board suppliers like us maximize price for PCB fabrication and for PCBA assembly.

Our CM relationships also have the ability to do box builds, wire harnesses, testing, engineering, etc. With our relationships, PCB Solutions can help your company get a quick start or help you reduce the overall costs of production, and provide resources many of the small business are not able to have during the early years – especially when it comes to cash flow.