Investment pays manufacturing capability dividends

29th December 2014

Barney Scott

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Stadium Group has announced that its iEMS division continues to invest significantly in key equipment to bolster manufacturing capabilities at its centres in Dongguan, China and Hartlepool, UK. The investments made in 2014 include an SMT assembly line installed at the Hartlepool facility, along with equipment from DEK (Screen Print), Assembleon (AX range of Pick and Place) and Vitronics Soltec (Reflow) to compliment existing SMT capability.

This equipment enables Stadium UK iEMS to assemble PCBs as large as 800x460mm, strengthening its position in the LED arena and opening up a host of opportunities and customers in the growing LED lighting market.

To add further value to the global EMS offering, Stadium iEMS has also installed automated conformal coating robots, PCB wash facilities and Cyberoptics AOI machines at both the Hartlepool and Dongguan sites. These facilities enable Stadium iEMS to meet the requirements of customers operating in challenging environments such as aerospace, telematics, defence and medical.

“The addition of the SMT line in the UK has increased capacity, significantly improved flexibility and efficiency, and future proofed our EMS capabilities through the enhanced technology, commented Peter Whitley, General Manager, Stadium Group. Within just three weeks of installation we secured a customer who had been unable to produce the larger boards themselves and had previously been unsuccessful in sourcing a suitable UK EMS partner. The SCS Precisioncoat Conformal Coating robots allow us to accurately coat individual components for customers in order to protect from contamination and moisture, improving long-term reliability. If our clients in the Medical or Aerospace sector require their PCB to be cleaned to meet industry regulations, we can now do that before coating the components with a layer of protection.”

Peter Whitley joined Stadium iEMS as General Manager in December as part of a Management upgrade. His 20 years of expertise in the EMS sector includes global roles at Jabil, Plexus and SVI.

“The addition of the Cyberoptics AOI has tightened quality checks during production ensuring that board errors are captured in real-time, significantly reducing rework requirements and improving on time delivery,” added Whitley. “Our UK and China footprint allows us to offer our customers a seamless transition from prototype through to low/medium or high volume manufacturing from the appropriate region to flexibly meet customer requirements with the confidence that their supply chain will be unaffected.”

In 2014 Stadium also further increased the electronic technology portfolio with an acquisition in the Wireless M2M space in July – Stadium United Wireless.