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ARNOLD ASSOCIATES

ENGINEERING & MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS

Engineering Services Summary

The Engineering Services offering spans several disciplines associated with the modern electronics and electro-mechanical industrial product design and manufacturing environment:

• New Product Introduction Engineering Services
• Plant and Facilities Engineering
• SMT & PTH Electronics Assembly Process Engineering
• Quality Engineering Services
• Product Design & Development Engineering Services

New Product Introduction

New Product Introduction (sometimes called NPI for short) involves the transfer of a newly designed product or service from R&D Engineering to Manufacturing. It is a critical step in the "birth of a new product."

Too frequently, product development & engineering personnel fail to understand and appreciate what it takes to ensure that their new creation can in fact be fabricated, assembled, tested, and shipped as designed. Too often we all fail to "really understand what our end customers needs are" and fail in concept to meet requirements.

Too frequently, the design effort has had to slip their schedules due to some technical problem only to hope that the "rest of the company" will somehow catch up and meet the first ship date commitment to marketing.

NPI requires a carefully coordinated and orchestrated effort by all of the disciplines in a company...it is a multivarient problem involving lots of people-people interaction and lots of validation and verification activity. The whole process that's been set up to manufacture the product must be tested, redesigned, and retested again and again...before the first product can be shipped.

Plant & Facilities Engineering

Faclities Engineering is a key component of the New Product Introduction (NPI) equation. You can't introduce a product unless the "process" that's supposed to be able to buy parts, kit them, assemble them, test them, configure them, & ship them is ready before the product is ready to introduce!

Facilities Engineering services include:

• CADD Building & Floorplan Engineering & Layout
• Three dimensional Utilities Distribution Design
• Development of Materials & Construction Specifications
• Draft Plans & Construction Drawings
• Pull Permits & Interface with County/City Architectural Review Boards and Building Departments
• Detail Design of Electrical Distribution systems
• Design of Liquid and Gas distribution
• Construction Superintendent and Job Site Foreman

Arnold Associates is practiced in the integration and management of multi-functional facilities engineering tasks associated with NPI. We are experienced with General Contractors and Trades Contractors frequently providing clients on-site management of projects

Manufacturing Process Engineering

Arnold Associates has significant experience providing Manufacturing and Process Engineering services to a variety of clients in the electronics and mechanical sectors of business to include telecommunications, instrumentation, television & video, control engineering, etc.

Services are generally "packaged" around an intended new product introduction (NPI) to meet anticipated introduction dates and reflect the unique requirements/demands of the new product versus the existing fabrication and manufacturing arrangements.

Here are some examples of engineering services offered clients:

• The most frequent offering is Pre-production Engineering involving:
  • Bills of Materials preparation
  • Creation of Assembly Documentation
  • Design Review of the Product as cross-functional team mate and frequently team leader representing Operations
  • Creation of Machine placement or insertion Programs
  • Design and Management of Pilot Runs to prove out both the process and deliver pre-production alpha and beta units
• Another critical offering is Component Engineering services provided primarily to procurement/purchasing in the form of Component Specifications.
• Today, owing to the growth of so called "virtual factories" we find ourselves frequently engaged in setting up and supporting Outsourcing or Contract Manufacturing including:
  • Product Support Engineering
  • Engineering Support of the Process

Quality Engineering

Arnold Associates is well aware for the need to perform investigation and failure analysis on both customer owned product as well as on in-plant product/process yield failures. This effort is obviously closely aligned with the usual Quality Assurance effort in most companies, but is presented here because of the need for rigourous engineering level analytical methods as a "team member" and not as a "traffic cop". The QE is your independent set of eyes, ears, nose, and fingers working in parallel with Manfacturing and Materials to ensure that production produces product that meets requirements the first time every time.

Our goal is zero defects; 100% first pass yield...every time.

The QE services we offer are exceptional given that we have been on both sides of the balance...both customer and supplier. We know how critical it is to independently measure, analyze, and report. The customer expects it; company management needs it!

Electronics & Mechanical Product Design

This offering provides clients with R&D and Design Engineering services in a number of areas of focus. Frequently, Arnold Associates has provided design services as an adjunct to other engineering service offerings and not as a primary assignment. We have product and controls engineering design experience ranging from vacuum tube to discrete transistor and integrated circuit applications design and a variety of analog, digital and r.f. circuit design areas including research laboratory instrumentation, production test equipment and systems, hand-held instrumentation, very high voltage control systems, etc.

Arnold Associates would be pleased to discuss your needs for Engineering assistance and encourages you to call or email us or fill out our Information Request describing your needs. It'll only take a few minutes.

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