01/10/07 Briton EMS Features In EMP Magazine

Privately-owned CEM Briton EMS is investing in the facilities and equipment to propel it into a successful future. But of special interest to this dedicated contract manufacturer is the renewable energy market. Matt Bailey headed to Bedford to find out more.

Bedford-based Briton EMS is a CEM with its sights set on continuing success. Its method to achieve this is to focus entirely on contract manufacturing, having no products of its own. “We are just a CEM,” says the company’s business development manager Peter Towler, “and because we don’t have any products of our own we don’t have to compete with them for capacity in our factory and we’re not looking for top-up business. Our aim is to continue our focus entirely on contract manufacturing and to produce products and sub-assemblies for our customers.”

The strategy must be paying off because when EM&P visited the company was in the process of moving brand new production equipment into its newly-leased building close to its existing facilities in Bedford. According to the company, the new site will help accommodate the greater quantity of orders and the larger customer base gained over the past few years and represents a 50 percent increase in capacity.

Briton’s chairman and commercial director, Tony Abri is thrilled with the progress the company has made over the past few years. “With this extra space we can increase our efficiency on existing work and attract up to £3m of new business which will grow the company to over £9m turnover. In view of this expansion we have also recently been recruiting new staff. The new building will allow us to expand our surface mount capabilities.”

 

Dedicated to contract manufacturing

Briton EMS offers a broad manufacturing service from PCB assembly, right through to complete turnkey product build. “We currently take total responsibility for the entire manufacturing process of a wide range of electronic and electromechanical products,” says Towler. “This includes full procurement, through-hole and SM PCB assembly, final product assembly, test and packing. Our test capability is superb with well qualified and experienced staff backed up by dedicated functional test equipment”

The design and engineering facilities enable the company to offer product design (software and hardware), re-engineer existing designs and cater for product revisions. It also offers a despatch service, either to warehouse or direct to end-users, with systems that allow for provision of spares, handling of returns and repairs, tailored to the customers’ needs. “Our small dedicated design team is able to work on modifications to customers’ circuits,” explained Peter Towler. “We do however work with external design houses and these relationships have worked very well for us. It’s our belief that our special skills, expertise and knowledge developed over many years, are best applied in servicing the low/medium volume, high mix product sectors in industries such as instrumentation, medical and broadcast electronics.”

Since Briton EMS was formed in 1979, there has been a steadily increasing trend for companies to outsource their manufacturing. The company’s goal is to help customers benefit from their decision to outsource by providing partnerships and taking responsibility for the entire manufacturing process. Flexibility is the key. Briton says it has developed its systems and processes to maximize the amount of flexibility it can provide while remaining cost effective and efficient.

 

Case study: PhoneCoach

PhoneCoach markets and sells telephone training systems. The management team came to Briton after seeing an article on its expertise and experience in complete product build. Many of the products in the range consist of a control unit with a number of ancillary parts such as telephones and tape recorders, packaged into a suitcase. The product is used by trainers to carry out training in telephone skills. This is a growing market especially given the recent flourishing of the call centre industry.

 Briton successfully manufactured the products but, along with PhoneCoach, identified some potentially serious future problems. Firstly, there were signs that some of the components were becoming obsolete and secondly, the product looked dated and was in need of cosmetic re-design.

 Tony Abri, approached PhoneCoach with a proposal to engage in a development program to design and launch a new product range. PhoneCoach directors were impressed with the proactive stance that Briton took. From those early meetings, it proposed specifications for a completely new range of telephone training products along similar lines to the original but with many additional features. These were all possible because of Briton’s ability to design in microprocessor technology.

 Briton designed the hardware, software, cosmetics, metalwork and took the products through EMC compliance testing. Benefits were incurred because of the implicit Design For Manufacture attitude that Briton took. Phonecoach subsequently launched its new range of products and has since maintained its status as world leaders in the field of telephone training.

 

 The future’s green

'“There’s a lot going on in renewable energy at the moment,”says Peter Towler, expounding on another area where the company is looking to grow its business. There is a need for high reliability electronics for harsh environments, requiring skills and production volumes which match our capabilities. When you think of the amount of coast – and the prevailing weather conditions we have in the UK, we should be on the cutting edge of this technology."

 

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