This article was sponsored by ABX Engineering, Inc., a Thomas Verified custom manufacturer of electromechanical assemblies and printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA).
“We often say that what we do is not glamorous,” says Brian Helm, senior vice president of ABX Engineering, Inc., an ISO 9001-2008, ISO-13485, and AS9100D approved contract electronics manufacturer. “We put parts on boards, assemble hardware stuff, and solder wires together. Our ISO procedures create an environment of discipline and documentation control, traceability, and other important areas of long-term, stable, high-quality production for our customers. We do things by the book and make sure that we offer repeatable results.”
But it’s this predictability that wins the 36-year-old company new business and long-standing customers.
“We’re going to work really hard to get your business, but more importantly, we’re going to work really, really hard to maintain and build your business,” says Helm. “Our average customer has been with us for over ten years. We have several customers that have been with us for over 30 plus years.”
For ABX Engineering, Inc., it’s about more than business — it’s about relationships. And that includes giving back and building up the Burlingame, California-based company’s community, a precedent set by the company’s founder, Paul Leininger. Helm says, “We’ve donated, and we’ve supported youth soccer, basketball, and baseball and softball to be able to be an active, positive part of the community.”
Get to Know ABX Engineering, Inc.
- ABX Engineering, Inc., serves a diverse nationwide customer base in industries from life science, medical, aerospace, industrial, and commercial. Helm explains the benefit is a two-way street: “We’re stable because no one industry or geographic territory controls that much of what we do.”
- The manufacturer just invested more than a million dollars into upgrading its state-of-the-art factory. Says Helm: “It has the latest SMT equipment to be able to handle boards that are higher density and have better throughput and better quality.”
- The company has had the same, dedicated management team for more than three decades.
- ABX is a full turnkey manufacturer providing materials management, purchasing, production, and test services to clients.
Thomas Insights (TI): Can you share a specific success story where your service helped a customer?
Brian Helm (BH): There was one customer in the aerospace industry that had a complex, heavily populated BGA, PCBA. They had hundreds of printed circuit boards that were not passing tests in almost all cases related to BGA placement and solder reliability.
After we started working with the account, our engineering and SMT team was able to quickly achieve 100% pass rates for the PCBAs. The customer’s engineers frankly were amazed this could be achieved without a major PC board redesign.
In addition to manufacturing expertise in SMT and BGA, our in-house test engineering team was able to work with the client on board level testing strategies to ensure the PCBAs were fully tested and would work when integrated into higher level builds.
This customer had worked with other suppliers for a long time and had a lot of problems. Huge dog piles because these printed circuit boards are maybe $2,000 to $3,000 a board. Super expensive. If that dog pile has 100 boards, that’s a lot of profit just sitting there doing nothing because the boards don’t work. Within three or four months, we had the yield up to 100%. Their engineers are very strong advocates of our technical abilities.
For the past several years ABX has been able to achieve and maintain a 99.7+% customer acceptance rate. We build the product, we deliver the product, and it works for the customer.
TI: What are you doing to overcome the massive shortages and supply chain disruptions happening around the world?
BH: It is as bad as I have seen it in my 37 years on the materials management side, dealing with material lead times and supply chain issues. It’s very challenging to get parts.
We work closely with our customers in their production planning, working with long-term purchases, stocking agreements, and collaborating on securing long-lead-time parts. If there is a part that we know that they’re going to need for building this PC board for the next three years, we work on longer-term purchase agreements with the client. We’ll even work with things like stocking agreements, where we’ll hold inventory to be able to help them.
On-time delivery is a metric we watch very closely, working to maintain 95+% on-time delivery. This begins by working to provide the customer the most accurate quote as possible, looking at component lead times, offering possible alternatives for problem parts, and then working closely with our production team to monitor the work in process and order production status.
We strive to maintain predictable on-time production. With ABX, you will get product, it will work, and it will be delivered on time, offering you the best overall value in a production scene scenario.
TI: How are you dealing with the skills gap in American manufacturing right now?
BH: The labor force is stretched right now. When we have to hire, it’s very challenging to find good-skilled people.
We’re fortunate because we have a lot of in-house training programs. We do a lot of cross-training between employees, and we’ve been able to organically build within our own team the skillsets needed to be able to handle the different production processes. The majority of our production crew has been with us for over ten years.
We have like 20 microwave machines where everybody is making their lunches. It’s just funny to see the comradery between the employees. Our people have worked together for a long time and get along pretty well, and often recruiting for new hires comes directly from our employees and people they can recommend.
TI: What’s ABX Engineering’s secret to growth?
BH: Hands-on executive management! Our customers have access to everyone in our management team right up to the executive level. In a lot of contract manufacturers, you’ve got to work through this person to get to that person. In our company, you can get directly to senior management if there is an issue that needs to be handled. We’re very accessible. And for a CM that is our size — we’re a medium-size CM — that accessibility is often not the case.
Customers have very good access to our staff as needed. If there is a complex production challenge, our clients can work directly with our engineers on the production floor — our SMT people, our manufacturing and engineering people — to be able to resolve those issues. Again, with a lot of contract manufacturers that we compete against, everything is done serially. It has to be done through Jim the account manager, who will have to talk to Sue the production manager, who has to follow up with Charles the SMT supervisor, so you can’t talk to the actual people who can work on resolving the problem.
We work hard to maintain long-term relationships with customers. You do that with ongoing open communications, open-order reports weekly to customers, and no surprises — just a real collaborative effort to be able to maintain and grow that relationship in a positive way. We love to take on challenging builds and help our customers grow their businesses.
TI: Why does it make a difference that ABX Engineering is a privately held company?
BH: We are a privately held, owner-operated company. We’re not answering to some investment banking firm. For example, one of our big competitors down in L.A. was bought by an investment banking company. After that happened, they started to lose a lot of clients because they were run in a different way. They replaced their president, who was very hands-on, with a money guy and, as a result, they didn’t grow and started losing long-time customers. They lost track of their core focus on customer service and quality.
Everybody in our management team takes pride in what we do. We work really, really hard. We build a long-term relationship with our clients and not just a transactional bid-to-build relationship. Most of our customers we would consider friends. I’ve worked with them for a long time. We talk about things well beyond just the business environment. We enjoy learning about their products as well as talking about kids, school, and life beyond printed circuit board assemblies! We honestly feel that if we don’t do a good job for them, we’re letting down a friend who has trusted ABX to be an important part of their company.
