Circuits Assembly announces winners of 2004 Service Excellence Awards.

UP Media Group Inc. (Atlanta, GA, www.upmediagroup.com) announced the winners of the 2004 Service Excellence Awards (SEAs) for Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) Providers and Electronics Assembly Equipment, Materials and Software Suppliers during a ceremony at APEX 2004 in Anaheim, CA. Sponsored by Circuits Assembly, the awards highlighted the winners who received the highest customer service ratings, as judged by their own customers.

Participating EMS companies' customers rated each company in five service categories: dependability/timely delivery; manufacturing quality; responsiveness to requests and changes; technology; and value for the price. Overall winners in the EMS category were Plexus Corp. (Neenah, WI) for companies with revenues over $500 million; Sparton Electronics (Jackson, MI) for revenues between $100 and $500 million; and Masstech EMS (Woburn, MA) for revenues less than $100 million.

Circuits Assembly also gave awards to the small and medium EMS companies with the highest scores in each of the five individual service categories. The overall EMS winners were excluded from winning individual categories. In the small-company category, Key Electronics (New Albany, IN) won for dependability/timely delivery and tied with Able Electronics (Hayward, CA) for responsiveness. Able Electronics also tied for the manufacturing quality award with Nu Visions Manufacturing LLC (Springfield, MA). Nu Visions Manufacturing won the value award and tied with Elcoteq--Dallas NPI (Dallas, TX) in the technology category. In the medium-company category, Creation Technologies (Burnaby, Canada) had the highest scores for dependability/timely delivery, manufacturing quality, responsiveness and technology, while Reptron Manufacturing Services (Tampa, FL) won in the value category.

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Equipment, materials and software suppliers were also rated in five service categories: dependability; ease of use; responsiveness; technology; and value for price. Aegis Industrial Software Corp. (Horsham, PA) received top honors in the manufacturing software category, and Agile Software Corp. (San Jose, CA) won the supply chain management software category.

Electronics assembly equipment award winners were: Asymtek (Carlsbad, CA) for dispensing; Assembleon (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) for pick-and-place; Petroferm Inc. (Fernandina Beach, FL) for cleaning; DEK (Flemington, NJ) for screen printing; and FEINFOCUS USA (Stamford, CT) for test and inspection. EFD Inc. (Lincoln, RI) won the electronics assembly materials suppliers award in the solder paste category.

A donation of $5,000 was made on the participants' behalf to the Surface Mount Technology Association's (SMTA, Minneapolis, MN) Charles Hutchins Educational Grant.