Stellar customer support is commonly touted in business-to-business communications, but few companies offer as much case study evidence to back up those claims as Koh Young does. Studying these case studies yields some common themes, which we explore in this summary. We encourage our readers to go deeper with the links included below.
Competitive Edge
As companies move manufacturing from overseas, there is competition to win this new business. Being able to differentiate themselves from their competitors as customers move to a regional strategy can make the difference. Intervala describes itself as a full-service manufacturer, innovative problem solver and customer-service champion. Intervala believes there’s a solution to every problem. The company creates customized, intelligent solutions for unique, high-performance electronic and electromechanical manufacturing requirements. Customers choose and stay with Intervala because Intervala understands its customers’ complex product and service needs and provides a customized experience tailored to their requirements.
Joe Benz, Intervala’s Director of Operations in the Pittsburgh region, explained the importance of standing out in a crowded marketplace. “In contract manufacturing, part of the game is to differentiate yourself from the pack. Certainly, one of the ways to do that is capital equipment selection. For us, the capital equipment selection process has been pretty straightforward. Our goal is to find the best equipment, not the best bargain, but the best equipment in the marketplace. We define that by the hardware and the software, but also the support.”
Intervala had a long association with members of the Koh Young team, including Head of Global Marketing Brent Fischthal, and felt very comfortable it was going to get stellar support as a result. But the company also used a performance matrix to look at how Koh Young performed against the competition. Joe explained that made the decision to invest in Koh Young’s printed circuit board manufacturing equipment easy.
“It was a paradigm shift for us,” said Joe. “In the past, our gear, as well as some of the gear we were evaluating, would just be two-dimensional, scanning the board, comparing the board to other two-dimensional images we had in a library to do some differentiation between same or different, but we were very limited in our ability to actually identify nonconformances and, therefore, very limited in our ability to improve our manufacturing processes.”
Adapting to new industry sectors
As electronics manufacturing ramps up in the Americas, there have been some persistent challenges for the EMS industry, including the shortage of skilled workers, the need to improve yields, the importance of the highest quality standards in regulated industries like aviation and medical systems. Often these EMS companies have been focused on low volume, high mix products, where the right inspection system can be game changing when trying to adapt to new market sectors.
ADCO Circuits has grown steadily for over 40 years, and while situated in the heart of the Motor City Detroit, Michigan, ADCO is in no way dependent on the automotive industry. In fact, they have enjoyed increasing success in sectors like diagnostic tools and aerospace and they continue to diversify their portfolio of both customers and industries. They carry numerous certifications including AS9100d, ISO, and ITAR, as well as the certifications essential for the automotive and aerospace industries.
Some of their success can be put down to investing in the latest and greatest technology. As Marc Damman describes, “We have ERP, everything is bar-coded, and if you go on the plant, you don’t see a lot of paper because everything is electronic, including all the inventory in our vertical storage systems.” Marc adds, “On top of first-rate equipment, we have a really good manufacturing, engineering and test engineering team.”
ADCO Circuits’ Head of Operations, Kevin Barrett, explains that “When we first considered SPI (Solder Paste Inspection), we didn’t see any value to it. But after we had replaced a lot of our older equipment with newer machines, we decided to take the plunge.” That ‘plunge’ came when Koh Young offered to bring demo equipment in and let the ADCO Circuits team play with it. Koh Young also brought in their Customer Program Manager, Ray Welch, to help ADCO install, use, and understand the equipment. Kevin Barrett says, “Once that happened and we got past that initial stage, then it was a question of ‘how did we run so long without it?’”
And then there’s the training
Skilled labor shortages can be addressed with good training programs, and that’s another area where Koh Young has proven to be invaluable. Garret Maxson joined ACDi (American Computer Development, Inc.) as a PCB designer over a decade ago and has risen through the ranks to become Vice President of Operations, with a focus on building a business that is driven by data and digital intelligence. In the time he has been with the company, it too has grown adding new facilities, most recently the acquisition of a fourth facility, this time in Kilmarnock, Virginia.
Garret elaborates, “It was a pretty clear-cut decision for us, and from there the support, training, and relationships have just grown. You can buy the best machine in the world, but if the operators can’t run it, you’re not going to get the full benefit from it. I think that’s where Koh Young excels. Between on-site installation and training, we’ve sent personnel down to their facility to receive factory training there. And we bring Koh Young in for supplemental training, as needed for new operators. All up, our manufacturing engineers have communication with their field service and application engineers, whenever necessary.”
In the early part of 2024 ACDi invested in five additional machines across three facilities and among those machines was the 23,000th machine shipped by Koh Young. The Koh Young team and ACDi were delighted to celebrate this momentous event at ACDi’s headquarters in Frederick, Maryland.
Ongoing Support
USI, Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., is a global leader in electronic design and manufacturing as well as a leader in the field of SiP (System-in-Package) technology. With the acquisitions of Asteelflash and Hirschmann Car Communication, USI has thirty (30) production and service locations across the four continents of Asia, Europe, Americas, and Africa, and offers customer diversified electronic solutions, material procurement, logistics, and maintenance services. USI is a subsidiary of ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd. (TWSE: 3711, NYSE: ASX).
USI’s selection of Koh Young Technology as their inspection partner was considered, detailed, and took account of global and local needs within USI and at their customers. Regional Test Engineering Director, Juan Manuel Rivera Mejia explains that “We have 24 SMT lines all working with SPI (Solder Paste Inspection) and AOI (Automated Optical Inspection), supporting different programs and industries, including automotive, industrial, telecommunications…” He added, the general strategy for equipment selection uses a list of the requirements from the customers, our own technical requirements, plus those of USI. We combine these documents and evaluate what technology is needed and necessary.
At USI’s facility in Guadalajara, México, Engineering Manager, Juan Carlos Hernandez Alvarez explains, “The quality of the machine is important, but the most important to me is the level of support and service that we have and, and to be honest, with Koh Young, we are having here a very good level of support and service. If the machine went down for any reason, we have the support in just 30 minutes, much faster than other brands where support for those machines or those platforms is taking hours. Hours that we have stopped the line.” Juan Carlos adds, “If we have a very high-quality machine but with a poor level of support and service. When the machine is down, it takes days sometimes to fix it. That is why the evaluation team is careful to perform a full cost-benefit analysis for the long term, not just taking care of the first purchase on the first day!”
Koh Young doesn’t just talk about customer support in the abstract. These customers have experienced it first hand and are happy to share their stories. Stay tuned for more about EMS companies striving for excellence.
