Advanced Circuits Inc. - Avoiding Industry Fate Early in the New Century
Avoiding Industry Fate Early in the New Century
The early years of the new century, troubled by a recession, were another difficult time for U.S. PCB manufacturers. From 2001 to 2003 the number of PCB makers was reduced by another 40 percent. Despite conditions that devastated the tech sector across the board, Advanced Circuits found a way to continue its pattern of growth. In fact, from 1998 to 2002, the company grew sales by 237 percent, and in 2003 it built a new 62,000-square-foot office and manufacturing facility. Several months into the recession, when Huston concluded that the downturn was so steep that the company could not afford to simply ride it out, he called together his senior managers to plot a strategy. What they quickly came to realize was that the company needed to continue using the tools that had made it successful in the first place: speed, quality, innovation, and culture. As long as it could turn out boards faster than airplanes could travel from Asia to the United States, the company would have ready customers no matter what the economic conditions. In addition, the workforce was already highly motivated, leaving quality and innovation as the areas that required some focus.
The management team came to realize that what hindered quality and cost time were problems that occurred at the start of a project, caused by fundamental design flaws that had to be addressed either before work began or later, when unnecessary delays resulted. Advanced Circuits devoted two years to developing a Web-based design-for-manufacturability (DFM) review service, providing design rule checks. The idea had been kicking around for some time, but only now did Huston free up IT and engineering people to concentrate on the task of developing the program, taking advantage of the Web capabilities the company already possessed. The way it worked, designers could send files for each layer of a board. Potential manufacturing problems that resulted in unnecessary production delays and frustrated designers were discovered. In this way, Advanced Circuits made designers look good with their customers while lining up new business for itself. Each evaluation came with a quote for building the submitted design. The program was dubbed FreeDFM and came online in October 2003. It was well received by customers, and because of its use less than 2 percent of orders were held up because of a design flaw.
Advanced Circuits grew revenues from an estimated $28 million in 2003 to $36 million in 2004. Given its advanced capabilities and reputation for speed and reliability, there was every reason to believe that the company would continue to enjoy long-term success.
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