Mega Tech of Oregon has invested in a brand new Juki KE-1080 High-Speed Flexible Mount System.  With our continued growth in 2011 and into 2012, the addition of the Juki KE-1080 will increase our capacity, as well as improve the accuracy and placement of our surface mount equipment.  The KE-1080 is equipped with the latest technology including a High Resolution Head, Laser Centering, and Vision Centering.

Meet our new Juki KE – 1080

The most significant improvement for MTO is that we will now have the ability to machine place 0201 and 01005 package sizes.  MTO is committed to keeping pace with the changing technology, and the machine placement of the smaller package sizes is just one example.

With the addition of the new Juki, we also took this as a great opportunity to expand the automated assembly area by knocking out walls and increasing our production area by an additional 750 sq ft.  This change is going to allow us to streamline many of the processes that used to be located in separate areas of the building.

The Juki KE-1080 is delivered

Here’s a short slideshow of the new machine being delivered and put in its place.

Juki running and improvements to the factory floor

Here’s a quick look at the new Juki KE-1080 SMT machine and the upgrades to the MTO factory floor.

Are you evaluating the total cost of ownership when you’re manufacturing is overseas? Do you include travel costs, intellectual property risks, or the ability of products being delivered directly to your production floor just-in-time as opposed to inflated inventories because of large order quantities? (Think cash flow)

I believe companies are beginning to realize the total cost impact that offshore manufacturing has on their bottom line. Many companies keep their accounting (and mindset) in silo’s or cost centers, and they lose track of items like travel cost to visit suppliers or the increase in logistics overhead to the unit price. This occurs when the accounting group consolidates the cost statement across the complete enterprise and the offshoring costs get blended with other cost categories.

There are other factors outside of direct costs that need to be evaluated as well, such as the opportunity for innovation that is missed because engineers are not able to easily talk with the people on the shop floor.  Many times these people have great ideas for the product, and without that communication these ideas are lost.

There are some tools available to help with this type of evaluation, the Reshoring Initiative has the Total Cost of Ownership Calculator.  I listened to a webinar in September of last year in which Harry Moser discussed his efforts with the Reshoring Initiative and its mission “to bring good, well-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States.”

Follow @MTODavid

The natural tendency of many engineers, in the absence of cost targets, is to design in future additional functionality.  This is rationalized by categorizing it as “good forward thinking engineering”. It may be good forward thinking but if it makes the cost target unattainable, how much is it worth? We have this discussion with our engineering teams regularly; it’s what I call “positive tension”.

When developing your product, every decision needs to be evaluated for both the potential cost impact and the value of future additional functionality. Beware of being trapped into adding future functionality at the expense of your cost target.

VendScreen makes an Android based product that retrofits into current vending machines. It allows for cashless transactions, provides nutritional information, as well as provides a new advertising platform. Watch the YouTube video of Paresh Patel’s presentation at the end of this post.

Mega Tech is delighted to be working with VendScreen, it is exciting to be involved with an innovative product that is revolutionizing an industry that has seen very little in the way of technological advances over the past 3 decades.

Follow VendScreen on twitter to stay up-to-date with their progress.

Keep following our blogs to see the end results.

With Mega Tech of Oregon’s growth in 2011 we have added a Production Manager who has an extensive background in manufacturing with a wide range of companies.

Fon Chaicharn came to Oregon as a Rotary Youth exchange student at Woodburn High School and fell in love with the beautiful Oregon outdoors. After high school he went to Portland State University, then transferred to Oregon State University.

Fon was homesick and went back to Thailand, where he earned a B.S. in Clinical Physiology. He spent seven years as an adult counselor at the Indochinese refugee camp in Thailand, then worked for two years as an election training officer for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. After that, Fon and his family returned to the United States, where he earned a B.S. in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering from Oregon State in 1998. He earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix in 2001.

Fon has extensive manufacturing and production management experience with aerospace, electronics, security and other industries. He’s worked with both small, local companies and global giants like GE, Matsushita and Rockwell Collins. Fon has hands-on and team-leader expertise in:

• New Product Introduction & Design for Manufacturability
• Production Set-Up, Tooling and Fixtures
• Lean Manufacturing Initiatives
• GE Green Belt Six Sigma and ISO 9002 Certifications
• Testing and Quality Control
• and Other Advanced Manufacturing Technologies.

MTO president Scott Schroeder sat down with Jerry Saveriano from Innovation Musings to discuss Scott’s passion Vested Outsourcing. This two part series was also featured in Oregon Business magazine’s website.

Vested Outsourcing is a topic you likely have not heard much about yet. It is an innovative approach to improving the outcome and effectiveness between companies and their suppliers.

Watch Part 1 of the interview.

To see how you can win a free copy of Vested Outsourcing personally signed for you by author Kate Vitasek by answering a question in Scott’s blog.

See Part 2 of the interview and more related news…

…

The reviews are coming in…

“Scott Schroeder, President and CEO of MegaTech of Oregon, does a great job in these interviews on Vested Outsourcing for the Innovational Musings Blog.” Kate Vitasek, Vested Outsourcing

“Scott Schroeder does a terrific job explaining and articulating the benefits of VO – well said and well done.“ Tom Ireland, Greater New York City Area

Join the Vested Outsourcing discussion on Linked-in.

Here’s how the interview appeared on the Oregon Business magazine website.

Watch Part 2 of the interview.

Nash applied Gaming Theory to the study of  Behavioral Economics to examine how people and groups’ interactions can affect economic outcomes. The movie A Brilliant Mind about John Nash’s life, starring Russell Crow, has a scene in a bar that does an excellent job of illustrating why Nash thought Adams was incorrect.

Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind
Story of John Forbes Nash, Senior Research Mathematician, Princeton University and
co-recipient of 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Nash’s brilliant insight can guide your selection of an outsource provider.

There is a lot at stake when you are looking to outsource services. If you fail to make the correct selection, your job may be at stake. Where do you start? How do you differentiate? How do you reach a Win/Win solution?

• Years in business?
• Age?
• Experience?
• Location?
• Financial stability?
• Equipment?
• Reputation?

The first and most common mistake is to focus on the cheapest offer. This is the easiest metric to use and hence many super busy outsourcing teams defer to it. This puts them into the position of attempting to balance the quality/service tradeoffs. This is an unnecessary waste of one’s time. It is always possible to get the highest level of both but not by selecting the lowest cost provider. Taking the more challenging path of finding the highest level of quality and service will yield much higher long-term value.

So where do you invest most of your time? I maintain that one should do a quick once over to assure the candidate provider(s) has the basic equipment and quality systems. Then drill into the foundational aspects of the relationship. Can you find proof that the provider practices what Nash professes. Do you hear more “I” and “me” than “we” in your conversations? Does the provider talk more than they listen? Does the provider ask questions about your specific business beyond the general transaction? Do they talk about outcomes? Are their questions focused on “what” or “how”? These are all indicators of the foundational principles of the provider.

How do you approach selecting an outsourcing provider? Is it every man for himself or is it as Crow states in the movie clip, “the best result will come from everyone in the group doing what is good for himself and the group. It is the only way we all win”? It takes courage to break from past negotiations training where we were programmed to win (In a Zero-sum game, I Win/You Lose). Moreover, it requires one to be smart about selecting an outsource provider.

Once you make your selection then the real work begins. Kate Vitasek has written two books addressing Vested Outsourcing. The first, Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules That Will Transform Outsourcing, focuses on the theory and the second, The Vested Outsourcing Manual, is a manual for implementation. These are both great books to use for reference as you work smartly towards a Vested Outsourcing relationship.

At MTO we practice the principles espoused by Nash and Vitasek. I have attended courses on Vested Outsourcing at the University of Tennessee and I am writing a series of posts about it in my Working Smart blog. Hope you enjoyed the video, check out the books and stay tuned for more from me.

To encourage you to get interested in Vested Outsourcing we are offering a free signed copy of the book Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules That Will Transform Outsourcing by Kate Vitasek to the first of our readers who correctly answers and responds to the below questionnaire.

When to use outsourcing is a question that can be evaluated using a simple matrix. Two key factors should be considered when making this decision; The internal expertise in the process you are considering outsourcing and the value to your organization. Below is a quadrant chart (adapted from Vested Outsourcing) depicting how these two factors interact in the decision process. Can you assign the following to the correct quadrant?

• Core Competency
• Lower Costs
• Vested Outsourcing
• Conventional Outsourcing

Hint: The answer to the question can be found in the Vested Outsourcing Interview with Scott Schroeder.

You can find us Thursday, September 29, 2011 at Booth #7.

Members of the Software Association of Oregon (SAO) and the Willamette Innovators Network (WIN) enjoyed chatting and great food at the new Eastgate Cafe before the MTO presentation and plant tour.

You can watch highlights of the tour here.