Components Bureau At Southern Manufacturing- EW preview

Protecting IP- Just who do you trust? Huntingdon, January 15 2007: ‘Unrivalled knowledge’ can be a dangerous boast, but for Andrew Ferrier, Commercial Manager of UK-based Components Bureau, it’s a term he is comfortable using when discussing his company’s experience within the Asian market, “We’ve been working with Asia for over 20 years, which builds up a lot of experience to draw on and a real bank of solutions which gives a great advantage when dealing with the whole management of outsourcing in the Far East.” When it comes to the subject of protecting Intellectual Property, Ferrier is acutely aware of the pre-conceptions people may have when dealing with China. “The question of protecting your IP is of course a universal one and not just applicable to China, but people can have a certain image of China being adept at making designs their own and it is one of the pitfalls you need to avoid if you want to outsource offshore. We trust the people we deal with, and only work with people we have built up an extremely good working partnership with over many years. Non-disclosure agreements are in place-all reciprocal- and we have a proven track record of decades of successful business with our partners.” Outsourcing to Asia is hardly a new idea, but Ferrier feels that many people don’t appreciate the benefits beyond cost-saving that the area can bring, “Whether you want a basic board assembly or a full turnkey box build we can offer it; indeed one of our latest contracts has been supplying complete units to a clients warehouse hub for direct delivery into their customers; China will offer you as little or as much as you need.” The association with Asia was further strengthened when Components Bureau became UK representatives of Surface Mount Technology (SMT) at the beginning of last year (2006). The SMT facility offers three production plants in mainland China, has ground-breaking green credentials and features amongst the top ten listed companies on the Singapore Stock Exchange, employing 10,000 workers it has a huge capacity for manufacture. However, manufacture is just one link in the outsourcing chain that Components Bureau has made its own. “What few people considering outsourcing take into consideration is the cost of management of that project. Any customer will usually have a history through engineering and production and there are always formats that need resolving, manufacturing anomalies that occur. We know the questions to ask so they get the product they want that fits the bill first time. It’s a question of knowing what to ask for and how to achieve results, again we set great store in having great relationships with good quality partners.”

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