What keeps us busy at Eurocircuits, projects we are working at, new idea's, background information and a platform where you can participate, give your opinion and guide us to what is important for you as an electronics developer
Eurocircuits is running production plants in Hungary an Germany. The capacity of both board-shops is sufficient for the European market and still leaves free capacity for the Eurocircuits business to grow.
Why did we step into a venture to build a brand new production facility in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India?
At the end of February I went to visit the new location of PCB Planet.
PCB Planet is the PCB CAM engineering unit serving Eurocircuits . They also serve other board houses in Europe, Asia and the USA. This dedicated CAM unit was set up in 2000 by the Eurocircuits management in Gandhinagar, India.
In Eurocircuits we believe in CAM automation to speed up the data preparation process as well as to guarantee a consistent high quality output level. But the skills and processing power of our CAM engineers remain a decisive factor. The growing number of jobs we process on a daily basis ( more then 300 daily in February 2013) means more workstations and more engineers. The building that we so nicely decorated in 2008 became to small to house alll these engineers in a comfortable way.
Between November 2012 and January 2013 we moved our whole operation to a building in a new industrial site in Gandhinagar.
In this new location there is now enough office space available to accomodate more than 200 engineers, and there is still enough empty space for future expansion.
We use our blog as a medium to provide useful information to the electronics engineering community. Most of our blog articles can be of interest for a long time after they are published, and we frequently got feedback from readers that they are not so easy to find back.
In the blog interface you have the possibilty to see the blogs organised in categories, you can see them organised according to tags attached to the blog article, or you can perform a search on keywords
A simple list of all articles, similar to a table of contents in a book can help to give you an idea what kind of information is available in our blog-posts. The following table shows the title of the blog, the publishing date, and the number of hits, to give you an idea of the popularity of the item.
Tijdens de week van 25-28 september is het weer zo ver en kan u ons vinden op HET Instrument 2012, in Amsterdam, Hal 1 stand B031.
Deze beurseditie hebben we besloten mee te dingen naar de nominatie: "Noviteit 2012 van de branche Industriële Electronica (IE)". Hiervoor hebben we onze nieuwste ontwikkeling "PCB Visualizer" als noviteit ingediend.
Waarom geloven wij dat PCB Visualizer een noviteit is?
PCB Visualizer, analyseert uw PCB data en vergelijkt deze met uw order data en toont uw print online op het scherm. De analyse gebeurt met dezelfde technische software en regels die wij intern gebruiken om uw print productieklaar te maken. Zo geeft de analyse, ook al loopt deze volledig automatisch, een realistisch beeld van mogelijke onduidelijkheden met uw order. Bovendien, en dat is wellicht meteen ook de grootste troef, gebeurt dit alles nog voor u de bestelling doorstuurt. U kan dus zelf, op voorhand, mogelijke anomaliën voorkomen. Bovendien staat PCB Visualizer in uw Eurocircuits klantaccount 24/24 en 7/7 ter beschikking zodat hij voor u werkt wanneer u dat wil. PCB Visualizer is een Eurocircuits software onwikkeling die technische CAM software en onze e-business software met elkaar integreert. Wil u meer weten over PCB Visualizer, lees dan onze BLOG over PCB Visualizer of ga direct naar de stempagina op de site van Het Instrument. Daar vindt u eveneens meer info en kan u direct uw stem uitbrengen. Stemmen kan tot donderdagnamiddag. Wij rekenen op u!
Zie de Eurocircuits PCB Visualizer in actie
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Dat kan u hier meteen doen. Op deze manier steunt u ons ook voor de ranking in de marketing cup! Dank bij voorbaat.
Gadget. Terwijl u registreert kan u zich eveneens aanmelden voor het Gadget 2012, de "compass clock". De compass clock,is ontworpen door YMIF engineering en de printen komen van Eurocircuits. Zeker doen!
Meer over hoe te registreren en over het aanmelden voor het gadget, vindt u in onze BLOG over HET Instrument 2012.
Verder willen wij u nog attent maken op het beursseminarie: "Design Automation & Embedded Systems" dat plaats vindt vrijdagochtend 28 september, zaal G104. Eurocircuits zal er een presentatie geven over "Eurocircuits goes visual" waar PCB Visualizer een wezenlijk deel van uitmaakt.
Wij kijken er naar uit u in Amsterdam te ontmoeten en hopen dat u voor ons STEMT en via ons REGISTREERT.
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Eurocircuits NV
For our first 10 years we subscribed to the sales pitch “you name it, we make it”. This was an expensive strategy which required heavy investment in plant, processes and expertise. By 2000 – 2001 there was little or no added-value margin left to sustain the investment; the recession and the migration of PCB manufacturing to lower cost areas in the Far East had driven prices down to an unsustainable level. Many PCB manufacturers either went out of business or became brokers with most of their turnover deriving from imports from China. The survivors specialized, either by moving into high-technology marketplaces where high prices would compensate for their ongoing investments or by finding ways to lower their costs. We adopted the latter strategy, introducing a clear, pre-defined offer combined with order pooling and online ordering and administration.
In 1960 Jerome McCarthy proposed the 4 ‘P’s marketing model This describes what a company has to offer in terms of Product, Price, Promotion and Place. At Eurocircuits we have always used Robert F. Lauterborn’s 1993 four ‘C’s model. This is based not on how the supplier sees the market but how the market, the customer, sees the supplier. The 4 ‘C’s are Customer value, Cost to the customer, Communication and Convenience.
What is the value of our offer to the customer?
1. We specialize in PCB prototypes and small series on short deliveries. Here the customer has two paramount requirements:
- The service must be always available
- Deliveries must be always on time
To achieve this we measure our performance constantly and our factories are rewarded accordingly. Our customers trust us – the trust model.
2. We have a clear offering: standard technology rigid boards produced on pooling panels with the widest choice of technology options in the market. We give the customer certainty right across the range of his requirements – the safe harbour model.
3. We are one of the largest specialist suppliers of prototype and small batch PCBs in Europe. Our size, growth and ongoing investment policy are our customers’ guarantee of quality, of continuous service availability, and of ongoing development to meet their changing needs. Each customer can enter into a long-term relationship with us, confident in the future - the safe harbour model.
4. We are not brokers; all our boards are produced in our own factories under our own control. We produce to IPC A-600 class II classification. Our quality system is certified to ISO 9000. Our customers can rely on us to deliver a consistently high level of quality across all their orders – the trust model.
5. Although last year we handled over 53,000 orders for more than 6,500 customers, each individual order is 100% verified in our front end engineering department. Each design is checked for manufacturability and for obvious mistakes in the layout. We report any anomalies to the customer and make suggestions how to resolve them. Our manufacturability analyses can help customers cut their board costs by up to 25%. Nothing is changed without the customers consent. Our customers are confident that the board we deliver matches their intended design – the trust model.
6. We use visualisation to convey as much information as possible. Right at the outset we generate a visual image of every design showing how it will look after production. The customer can spot anything that doesn’t look right before production starts - the trust model.
7. We already have full batch traceability which the customer can access quickly online. We are now extending traceability to individual PCBs and individual machines and processes. This gives us closer control over our production facilities and gives the customer another guarantee of our quality – the safe harbour model.
8. Our eC-soldering-equipment, the solder paste printer, eC-stencil-mate, and the chamber reflow oven, eC-reflow-mate, are the first two of a series of machines developed to save our customers time and money assembling their prototypes.
How does the customer perceive the cost of our services?
1. Order pooling (combining several orders on the same production panel) reduces the production cost per order. Our customers trust us to give them the best and fairest prices – the trust model.
2. Pooling means that we don’t have heavy set-up costs per order, so we don’t charge for tooling. So design iterations carry no cost penalty – the trust model.
3. Our public calculator makes our prices accessible to the whole marketplace, customers and competitors alike. This means that our pricing must be consistent, stable and competitive – and our customers know this – the trust model.
4. Transport costs for multiple orders are recalculated at shipment to keep them as low as possible – the trust model.
5. In the unfortunate event of a delay due to us, we reschedule the order and recalculate the price according to the new delivery term – the trust model.
6. Online pricing and ordering using streamlined menus requiring minimum data saves the customer time and money, cutting out traditional communication costs – the trust model.
How do we bring our service to the customer?
1. Our customer interface is available 24/7 It is not just a website for getting prices but an open window into our complete e-business offering. The customer has streamlined access into the whole business process, his user profiles, quotations, orders, invoices and payments, both current and historical. Production data is stored indefinitely – the safe harbour model.
2. All board data and documents can be quickly retrieved and easily visualized. The customer can readily download the production data, for example to order third-party stencils – the trust model.
3. The online interface offers the customer a window into our internal administration. This guarantees the customer transparency towards his orders with Eurocircuits – the trust model.
4. Interaction with Eurocircuits can be 100% online but personal support is also available. Eurocircuits has a professional sales force based in the head office in Mechelen Belgium and in sales offices throughout Europe. The trust model.
How can the customer find us and what we offer?
1. We have a clear and well-maintained website which is regularly updated to improve its clarity and ease of use. It contains a wealth of technical information on our services and how to get the best out of them. Other documents show how to design a PCB to keep costs down and ensure that the order goes rapidly and safely through our process. This is backed by a series of videos showing how we make a PCB – the safe harbour model.
2. We have our own YouTube, blogs and social media channels to keep our customers up to date on what we are doing. Transparency is the key to customer trust – the trust model.
- via our blog: http://www.eurocircuits.com/index.php/eurocircuits-printed-circuits-blog
- via our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/eurocircuits
- via Twitter: https://twitter.com/eC_PCB
3. We have local support in all major countries and a large multilingual team in Belgium. Our customers know that they can get support whenever they need it – the safe harbour model
4. We inform all customers about important service upgrades and events we will attend by email. We put the same news on the web site. Of course every user is free to opt out of this service – the trust model.
5. For the last 10 years we have attended all major exhibitions in our field in Europe so that our customers can meet us face to face in their own countries.
2011 was a good year. For the first time our PCB turnover exceeded 15M€. The total consolidated group turnover including equipment sales amounts to 16.9M€.
Overall sales increased 3.57% against 2010. Our online pooling services showed a healthy growth in sales value of 14.14 %.
The turnover evolution in PCB sales over the last 5 years is as follows :
Started as Europrint, right from the beginning, we were active in the market of prototypes and small series. Our goal was to serve our customers with any wimp they had: “You name it, we make it”. This requires a rather costly organization and does not leave room for optimization in the business process or in the production process.
The constant decay of PCB prices and the declining appreciation for service “old style” went hand in hand and were accelerated by the disappearance of the layout and board specialist at the customers’ organization. With the disappearance of specialization, the prices collapsed over the years. Leaving a high cost of service for a lower price to kill the margins and finally leading to a loss and the inevitable end.
