Contract Manufacturing and Engineering Services
Mega Tech of Oregon
Mega Tech of Oregon hosted an SAO (Software Association of Oregon) and WIN (Willamette Innovators Network) Tech Pub event last week and enjoyed a great turnout. It also was a great opportunity to showcase the new Eastgate Cafe, who provided great food for the event.
The evening started with an hour of networking for the 35 attendees, and then Scott Schroeder gave a presentation on “Bringing Your Product From Prototype to Production.” [Read more...]
Bill of material accuracy is everything to the success or failure of any project. In many cases, manufacturers provide a “secret decoder ring” for assembling the concoction of characters euphemistically referred to as their “part number”. What takes a little more effort is the determination of what is possible to have produced from what can be called out via the part number codes themselves.
While it may be possible to create a part number, it doesn’t always mean there is a factory that actually makes the device. Capacitor specification is one area that routinely falls prey to this exposure to error. For example, you can identify all of the unique codes for the creation of a given AVX part designation that would “appear” to be possible, but after further research into the respective product line offerings one finds that the required device called out is not actually available for sale, or even capable of being produced. [Read more...]
On top of our ISO9001 audits every six months, we make sure that each of our assemblers is IPC Certified, IPC is the Association Connecting Electronics Industries. IPC is a member-driven organization whose main goal is to standardize the assembly and production of electronic assemblies.
Every two years we have an IPC training lead by our own Cheri Gird, who is our in-house IPC Certified Trainer. This year was especially important for Mega Tech not only because of our growth over the last year, but also because the standards went from Revision D to E. [Read more...]
The manufacturing bill of material (BOM) is the recipe followed by our production “chefs” for the successful integration of your products into our processes. Clarity and consistency are the keys to effective communication of what the intended results are to be. Avoidance of common mistakes, such as those identified in prior blog posts, and adherence to this guidance can help facilitate the creation of your masterpiece from the Mega Tech shop floor “kitchen”.
Providing a BOM in a spreadsheet format is very useful for the quotation phase of the project. Pieces can be easily extracted and uploaded to various vendor systems for initial pricing and pre-loaded for procurement should all go well. Formatting the spreadsheet should be kept to a minimalist approach by avoiding lots of borders, hidden notes, links to other databases and such as these features tend to bog down the quotation process. It may look good, but the result is less than practical when deployed in the field.
A simple tabular arrangement works best and the column order flows most effectively using the following sequence:
With all of the hard work our crew puts in here at Mega Tech of Oregon, we got a great treat today as we won the pizza lunch from KRKT Country. They showed up with 10 Ciddici’s Pizza’s, soda, and a fun loving attitude.
We wanted to thank Scott and Angie for choosing Mega Tech of Oregon. If you’re in the Corvallis/Albany area, enter your workplace to win at www.krkt.com.
MTO prepares for greater growth in 2011 with promotions, new hires, enhanced website. Company president says, “Our investments in new business development in 2010 started to pay off, and we’ve positioned MTO to be in a stronger position to take on new clients in prototype and pilot production runs for companies launching new products.”
Long term support of production throughout the entire product life cycle brings with it a litany of design “gotchas” that invariably pop up to curse even the best laid of plans. One such event that frequently occurs is the discontinuance of a device from a manufacturer as technology moves forward. When components move from cutting edge status to mainstream “commercial off the shelf” or generic acceptance, manufacturers look toward eliminating these parts from their lineup as they generally have encountered competition in the marketplace that leads to reduced profit margins.
“One of the Best Teams I’ve Worked With”
I am excited about the prospects for the future of Mega Tech of Oregon. Several changes in key personnel have occurred this year as a result of our rapidly expanding business level. All of which represent both a culmination and beginning of some really great efforts by the MTO team.
The first change involves John Daniels our Director of Sales and Marketing. John has been with MTO in his current capacity since June 2004 and has decided to retire at the end of this December and spend more time with his wife Paula and his dune buggy. John has played a key role at MTO over the years and was instrumental in helping hold things together while I was out for an extended time period due to health problems. I want to extend the warmest thanks and gratitude to John for his leadership and unquestionable commitment to MTO’s success.
See more of the team…
Common design issues, that typically continue to reoccur, add to the cost and lead time of any given job as each bill of material (BOM) has to be scrubbed for corrections to these occurrences. Additional time is required to identify, gain approvals for and make the needed corrections, oftentimes prior to the completion of quotations. We have found that many of these issues can directly affect the material and/or labor prices calculated. In several cases these questions may also need to be reviewed by the appropriate design engineer to validate what was intended from what was actually presented to us in the BOM. Previously we covered tolerance and size specifications and their implications to product cost. Here, we will continue with the next most commonly noted scenario that adversely affects your builds.
From time to time I run across some really innovative ideas that have the potential to be disruptive. Recently, I attended a class on an innovative idea that I consider disruptive. I wrote about this innovation in an earlier blog called, InVESTing in Vested Outsourcing.
A client sent me a link this week to a video about another disruptive innovation. After watching the video, I was struck by how this young man has applied some existing technology in a way that promises to have huge significance. His perspective was not through traditional “inside-out” views but the “outside-in”. Take a look at this video with that in mind;
Scott grew-up in Oregon’s forest products industry. His dad was CEO of a forest products company...
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Ron has over 25 years hands-on experience in tech-sector manufacturing and support services...
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Matt has over 30 years experience in electronics and manufacturing covering a broad cross-section of industry disciplines...Full Bio
David joined the family tradition and business in 2004. He worked at MTO summers and vacations while attending college...Full Bio
