According to Phil Randall, “Itochu were prepared to go that extra mile to ensure that our requests were answered and our specific requirements met, furthermore, the advantage of the Takaya system over its competitors with its proven capability to interface with our existing CAD software. These two factors combined made the decision to select the Takaya from Itochu the obvious conclusion”.

November 2001

ACW, headquartered at its new premises in Hedge End, Southampton, is one of the top contract manufacturers in the United Kingdom. Established in 1989, the company has enjoyed a high Compound Annual Growth Rate during the past 7 years to £27 million sales in the financial year ended September 2000. ACW continues to grow and is currently turning over an annualised £50m, and has substantial future growth expectations. This has been possible through substantial increases in capacity, notably by the addition of ACW Wales in 1998 as well as its takeover of Tandberg Television’s production facility in Southampton which has become its centre of operations.

The company has substantial expertise in most areas of electronics with telecommunications, digital broadcasting systems, audio / video and aerospace strongly represented. With over 150,000sq ft of manufacturing facilities spread between three sites in Southampton and Petersfield in Hampshire, and Tonypandy, Mid-Glamorgan, South Wales ACW possesses a comprehensive capability from fine pitch and BGA surface mount assembly through high speed automatic test to boxed product. All products are supplied on a fully procured basis. Highly experienced management combined with well-trained staff give internationally respected quality.

ACW’s quality policy is to satisfy customers' agreed requirements. . Each member of staff is responsible for the quality of the products manufactured and the service provided. The company operates a quality system which meets the requirements of customers and is in accordance with BS EN ISO 9002.

In addition to corporate quality approvals, ACW has BABT (British Approvals Board for Telecommunications) Facility Approval for a wide range of telecom products. Facilities are regularly audited by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) for products for shipment to North America.

ACW operates to workmanship standard IPC-A-610 Rev C Class 3 inspection class 2 and carries out regular quality audits of all operations. Full ESD measures within the production environment have been established and continually monitored. The company has always insisted where possible on testing all of its customers' product before delivery. Consequently it has invested heavily in manual and automatic test equipment as evidenced by the installation of a second Takaya 9400.

Specialising as it does from medium volume batch production to low volume and even specific product manufacture, ACW has to ensure that in order to maintain both cost effective production and speed to market, they are involved from the outset in the design for manufacture considerations. They even go as far as issuing “Design for Test” rules so that electronics designers have a guide plan. However, in order to maintain its commitment to “speed to market”, ACW had to redefine its approach to the testing of boards.

Although functional testing is essential for the final stage of the production process it is time consuming, expensive and impractical when boards inevitably have to go through a series of development phases before the final stage is achieved. A number of test processes were studied before ACW decided on the Flying Probe process.

In circuit testing (ICT) is only useful once the board design and its components have been fully proven and it does provide the best fault coverage of the test types but such fixtured testing is time consuming and expensive, also the board has to be designed for in-circuit testing. Similarly AOI (automatic optical inspection) is slow and cannot check unmarked components. JTAG boundary scanning, although fast, can be complex to set up but cannot detect analogue faults.

Despite the extended testing time, flying probe testing provides good coverage, a low set up cost with short lead times and it was these two factors – short lead time and low set up cost that decided the company on the flying probe process.

Having selected the flying probe option, ACW then went about researching the various suppliers, including the Takaya equipment from Itochu, and the systems they provided. Phil Randall, ACW’s Senior Test Development Engineer, undertook the programme to determine the equipment that best suited their needs. The Takaya 9400CE from Itochu Europe was eventually selected as he was impressed not only by the simple, easy to follow set up and speed and accuracy of the Takaya but also by the quality and levels of support he received from Itochu during the selection process.

According to Phil Randall, “Itochu were prepared to go that extra mile to ensure that our requests were answered and our specific requirements met, furthermore, the advantage of the Takaya system over its competitors with its proven capability to interface with our existing CAD software. These two factors combined made the decision to select the Takaya from Itochu the obvious conclusion”.

ACW has a first class technical team who generates complex hardware and software test solutions. Mostly PC-based, the test rigs conduct tests above and beyond the expectations of their many customers. Sophisticated stand alone automated functional and soak test systems have been produced which provide very high levels of confidence in field reliability. This concentration on the development of high levels of customer confidence has enabled one customer of ACW to allow delivery direct from ACW into their distribution network.

Graham South, Itochu’s Takaya Product Manager, stated that it is Itochu’s policy to work closely with its customers, forming a technical partnership thus ensuring that not only are software developments and upgrades made speedily available to the users but that the users get the best out of the Takaya systems.

Press contact:
David Claxton
Slipstream PR & Marketing Communications
1 Newport Close, Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire, SO53 4NN, UK.
Tel/fax: +44 (0) 23 8026 6562
e-mail: david@s-stream.co.uk

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