Clarity Design is not a typical electronics manufacturing services provider. Founded and led by engineers, the Southern California contract manufacturer has built its reputation on a simple but powerful principle: that design and manufacturing are strongest when they exist under one roof.
For Tom Lupfer, President and Founder, that philosophy has its roots in childhood. “My father manufactured ceramic capacitors all my life, so I always liked to go into work with him and see things being made,” he recalls. “I think that was in my DNA.”
That instinct never left him. Today, Clarity Design operates as both a full-service EMS provider and a fully staffed design and engineering firm—a combination Lupfer believes creates something greater than the sum of its parts. “We do take an engineering approach to manufacturing and to design here at Clarity Design. Having it all under one roof, our engineering presence makes our manufacturing stronger because we can help with fixturing and we also design for manufacturability. And it makes our designers better as well, because manufacturing gives them feedback as to the manufacturability of the products they design.”
Blake Carlson, Director of Manufacturing, sees that dual capability as Clarity Design’s defining competitive advantage. “We’re a contract manufacturer and we’re a fully staffed design and engineering group. We can play in the design space, the manufacturing space, or we can do both. That really comes to light when customers allow us to get involved in the design phase and we can design around our manufacturing capabilities.”
A Niche Built on Trust: Medical Device Manufacturing
That engineering-led approach has proven particularly valuable in one of the most demanding sectors in electronics manufacturing: medical devices. Clarity Design’s entry into the medical space was organic, growing alongside a key customer before expanding into a core part of the business.
“It really started with one of our customers that was really on a roll,” says Lupfer. “It was a consumer non-prescription, over-the-counter product, but as they grew, we grew, and that got us into the medical domain, and then we’ve just grown from there.”
Today, Clarity Design holds an impressive set of credentials that reflects the seriousness with which they approach quality and compliance. “We have ISO 9001 for general best practices in design and manufacturing, 13485 for medical device design and manufacturing. We’re registered with the FDA as a manufacturer of Class II devices, and ITAR registered for any restricted military or defense products.”
Operating at this level leaves no room for compromise on process control. Every board is traceable. Every step is documented. And when it came time to strengthen their SMT inspection capability, the bar for any new technology partner was set accordingly.
The Gap: No SPI or AOI
For all of Clarity Design’s engineering strengths, there was one area where their SMT line had room to grow. They had no automated solder paste inspection or automated optical inspection—and they knew it.
“We didn’t have AOI or SPI,” says Carlson. “When we were looking at our SMT lines, that was the next improvement we wanted to make. We decided we wanted AOI and SPI. We looked at a couple of different options for used machines. We even brought one in-house and tried to hook it up and just evaluate its capabilities, and it just didn’t seem like the value was there.”
The experience of evaluating used equipment only sharpened their thinking. If they were going to invest in inspection technology, it had to be right—not just adequate.
Finding Koh Young: A Story Worth Telling
The path to Koh Young began not in a sales meeting, but with a pointed question from a prospective customer.
“We were evaluated as a manufacturer by a company, and they said: you look great, except you don’t have SPI and AOI,” recalls Lupfer. “And I said, fine, when you see that technology at CMs, whose machines do you see? And they said the machines they see the most are Koh Young, out of South Korea.”
The connection came shortly after, at a trade show, when Lupfer encountered the Southern California Koh Young representative, Spencer Boone from PMR. A conversation followed. Then a demonstration that went well beyond a standard showroom run.
“They set up a demo at their facility. We actually brought some of our boards in and ran them through. That gave us a high degree of confidence that, yeah, that’s a good choice.”
Gabe Krishnadasan, Process Engineer at Clarity Design, was part of that evaluation and remembers it vividly. “We brought a fully assembled board with components, and then we actually did a solder paste on two of the boards, and I held it on my lap as we drove up to Orange County. We got to see them go through the machines and pass, and then we got to induce some failures on both the assembled board and the solder paste board, and watch the machines pick up those issues.”
That hands-on, real-world test on their own product was the decisive moment. Clarity Design had found their partner.
Installation and Training: A Partnership From Day One
From the moment the machines arrived, Koh Young’s support set the tone for the relationship.
“The installation was very straightforward,” says Carlson. “There are always challenges in moving individual pieces of equipment on an SMT line. In our case, we tried not to touch the pick-and-place machines. We had to move a stencil printer one way and the oven the other way, and make sure everything was lined up and leveled. When the AOI and SPI machines came, we uncrated them, slotted them in their spots, got them leveled, and then Koh Young came in with their fantastic startup support. As part of the initial training, they checked and made sure safety interlocks were working, conveyors were working, and all the rails looked good.”
Training was equally thorough. The local San Diego Koh Young representative visited Clarity Design’s facility every day for two weeks—one week dedicated to SPI, the second to AOI.
“We walked away from that very knowledgeable, very comfortable,” says Carlson. “Our process engineer was able to start the line for a new board all by himself the very next week, and we’ve been doing it ever since.”
For Krishnadasan, who took the lead on programming and daily operation of both machines, the training was transformative. “We got a week of SPI training and then a week of AOI. It was with two different people from Koh Young. The training is wonderful. I feel like I’m really equipped to program both of these machines, interact with them on a daily basis, and interact with the data that they generate.”
The relationship didn’t end when the training did. Ongoing support has remained a defining feature of the partnership. “Their support team has been amazing,” says Krishnadasan. “Putting a ticket in with Koh Young America has been super simple and they get back to us really quickly. They’re logged into the machines within 30 minutes of me submitting a ticket.”
Operational Impact: Smarter Lines, Better Decisions
The benefits of Koh Young’s SPI and AOI technology have been felt across every dimension of Clarity Design’s operation—from line efficiency to process improvement to the feedback loop between manufacturing and design.
“Having the automated inspection increases efficiency, bottom line,” says Carlson. “If there’s a board that we’d run on the lines without AOI and SPI, we’d have to rely on either an automated test down the line or a human being inspecting the board later to detect a problem. With AOI and SPI, you catch problems immediately. You stop the line and you don’t make more product with the same problem. And it also identifies the problem. If there’s a tombstone component, it tells you: here’s a tombstone component, I’ve identified it, now all you have to do is go fix it.”
The offline programming capability has added another layer of operational flexibility. “We have an offline programming station,” explains Krishnadasan. “If our line is running, and it is most of the time, I’m able to do the programming offline and remote into that computer from my desk. Very seamless and very simple integration into programming, and it doesn’t hold up our lines.”
Perhaps most valuably, the data coming off the Koh Young machines has become a tool for continuous process improvement. “If we have an issue with a board that’s lingering and more frequent than others, we can make changes somewhere upstream of the line and monitor that as it goes through the AOI, to see if we’re doing better, or if our changes are actually making improvements or getting worse. Having that data has been really essential in making those changes to our processes.”
And because Clarity Design has designed many of the products it manufactures, that data feedback loop extends all the way back to the engineering team. “The boards that get designed on our other side of the wall are my favorites to build,” says Krishnadasan. “They have the least amount of problems and they go through the line easiest. And even boards that we design and have problems with, I’m able to just walk down the hall and talk to our design engineers about how we can improve it.”
The Result: Lean, Confident, Customer-Ready
The cumulative effect of Koh Young’s technology and support is a manufacturing operation that runs leaner, catches problems earlier, and presents with confidence to prospective customers.
“We have a pretty skeleton crew running in steady state operation,” says Carlson. “It’s really one operator running the line and a process engineer supporting, and that’s more than enough with the automation. I would always advocate for more automation and more efficiency and Koh Young has given that to us. I think it would do that for other people as well.”
For Tom Lupfer, the proof is visible every time a new customer walks the floor. “As we bring in prospective customers and they see our shop and we point out the benefits of SPI and AOI, they get it. And they really like it!”
Clarity Design is a Southern California-based electronics manufacturing services provider and design engineering firm specialising in medical devices, defense, and high-reliability commercial electronics. Koh Young is the world’s leading provider of 3D measurement-based inspection solutions for the electronics manufacturing industry.
To learn more about how Koh Young’s automated optical inspection and solder paste inspection systems can strengthen your SMT operation, or to explore our full range of customer success stories, contact Koh Young America.
