Despite the global pandemic and national lockdowns slowing progress, we have had an extremely successful 2020 and have seen steady growth and putting us in a stronger position as an Electronics Manufacturing Service (EMS) provider. Through careful operational planning and active steps taken in line with the Government's guidelines, we have remained operational throughout the year while protecting our staff members, enabling the full suite of Prima services to remain available to our customers without any interruptions.
We have a high degree of confidence that 2021 will be a fantastic year for us as national restrictions begin to ease, enabling further Prima improvements projects to be executed. Some of these developments include a transition to integrated Surface Mount Assembly (SMA) lines, initially limited to the printers and SMA machines but extending later in the year to incorporate reflow and inspection.
PCB Layout Design and Obsolescence management
As a contract electronics manufacturer (CEM) that listens to its customers, we constantly try to update our service portfolio to address and accommodate the changing customer needs and demands. As a result, we now offer PCB Layout design services using Altium software and an advanced, software-based obsolescence management service to all customers. We now have a more comprehensive service portfolio offering a ‘design to delivery’ solution and several customers are already benefiting from these newly introduced services.
Dedicated box build/mechanical assembly area
Box build has been a growing area of our business model and some of the recent projects are a testament to the confidence our customers have in the quality and flexibility of the service. Consequently, we have invested considerably in our box build capabilities in the last year and now have a dedicated mechanical assembly area to manage our box build projects.
Enterprise Resource Planning Software
One of the projects within our continuous improvement programme saw large investment and the signing of a contract with EPICOR as the new ERP software system. The EPICOR project will deliver huge efficiencies across the whole business, benefiting all our customers, and will assist with scalability and the ability to rapidly respond to customer demand. The new ERP system is scheduled to go live by June 2021 with our staff already being trained to use it.