Comments on: Personalities of EMS companies

By: Joseph Wei

Joseph Wei — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:34:40 +0000

Major OEMs are mostly located in pretty expensive labor countries, they first started with outsourcing manufacturing to EMS, and recently to ODMs to reduce their product costs. Both EMS and ODM providers are expanding their capabilities to cause a convergence in the industry. Acer founder Stan Shih was recently quoted in DigiTimes that both EMS and ODM will become DMS, Design Manufacturing Services providers.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:12:35 +0000

The real founder of the EMS industry was Joe MacKenzie who started the original Flextronics back in the early 80’s over by the FAA center in Fremont. His organization was quite profitable, had a shop floor data management system well before the advent of more sophisticated systems and he knew his costs to the penny. Granted the draconian locking turnstiles for employees where their times were tracked to the minute gave rise to the urban legend of the American Sweatshop. The secrecy of his EMS facility addad a mistique to the early hush-hush products about to be launched in Silicon Valley. No one got into his production facility that wasn’t absolutely necessary – no guided tours, etc. What happened inside the early days of Flextronics stayed there and it was one of the reasons that his company always had plenty of work.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:44:58 +0000

I remember fondly the days of working at Jabil in Michigan, those were some great times from 94-96 left in the middle of 1996 for a much smaller CM, actually was a great move a we are growing and Jabil has pretty much left Michigan.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:13:59 +0000

We used to refer to the business as the “Three S’s”, stuff, solder, ship, but “board stuffers” works, too. I worked for Solectron for five years during the heyday and now work for Asteel Flash. Those were great times at Solectron with our stock price increasing almost daily. Solectron was at one time one of the fastest growing stocks in the market. But there is no glamour in this business as you describe. Investors don’t seem to enamored with the industry either. Year 2000 till now has been dismal from a stock appreciation point of view. And while other tech companies are doing well, the ECMs are laggards. You may have fond memories of working with some of the people and that makes the industry seem better to you. Solectron buying C-Mac was one of many, many mistakes made. And I was a manager there. But poor management certainly yields poor results. Fortunately, I left well before the decline beginning in 1999. What a disaster, but I saw it coming and sold all my stock in time. Sorry to hear about the tragic accident of your friend. At least he died doing what he liked, riding a motorcycle. Unfortunately, his life was taken away from him, which I find particularly tragic. But at least he didn’t die from cancer because of inhaling flux fumes working at an ECM.