Express Manufacturing Inc. Expands Early-Stage Manufacturing Capabilities with Four New Machines.

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- Southern California Company Offers Benefits of Automated Manufacturing for Prototypes, New Product Introductions and Small Production Runs

Express Manufacturing Inc. (EMI),a leader in electronics contract manufacturing, today announced the installation of four new machines, Fuji XP-142E and Fuji XP-242Es, in one of its Orange County facilities. The new machines will help to expand the company's prototyping capabilities, and dovetail with the company's philosophy to support early-stage manufacturing and prototype services through its contract manufacturing facilities in Southern California.

The new Fuji machines also allow EMI to provide customers the flexibility of small production runs while also delivering large production run benefits of automation, lower costs and higher reliability.

"EMI is finding yet another way to provide a great operations efficiency upside to our customers, allowing for reduced setup times, short production runs, and for prototype jobs to be more automated," announced EMI President CP Chin. "We will now be able to supply our customers with a better ability to produce more prototypes at a lower cost per unit by increasing the output of machine operators and placement accuracy for components. We will also be able to more closely match inventory to demand for specific lower volume projects."

A great deal of electronic manufacturing still remains on this side of the Pacific Ocean; many innovations and product concepts are developed in the United States. It is important that a new product, before it reaches the stage of market acceptance, be tested and produced as close as possible to its development team. Once the product reaches optimum threshold, EMI can transition the manufacturing to its facilities in China, where customers benefit from lower labor cost.

"Our goal is to grow with our customers, to work with them during product development and infancy and give them a path to larger production volume and growth," declared Chin. "Quick machine setup and tear down provides an affordable and flexible way to keep the product in the U.S., and if a customer wishes to transition manufacturing after this stage to China, we can offer this -- while retaining the knowledge acquired during the product's early life cycle."

Automating lower volume jobs provides benefits of higher accuracy, higher consistency machine assembly, and machine inspection of the work, which in turn leads to higher quality and more consistent products.

EMI customers will see an improvement in the company's performance through quicker delivery and improved reliability due to a more controlled production environment. Production processes can be handled without manually inspecting the assemblies prior to reflow process.

"Our customers would love to see us handling their products without operators touching sensitive components that are already placed on the PCBs," added Chin, noting that EMI was again bringing large run benefits to prototype and small runs by implementing the new Fuji machines.

Another key benefit is that the new machines are able to handle a large diversity of components from small to large sizes, as well as odd sizes.

Some components that previously may have required manual insertion can now be inserted by machine and inspected by machine -- once again benefiting the customer by encouraging higher quality and more consistent products.

About EMI:

Express Manufacturing Inc. (EMI) provides world-class electronics manufacturing services to OEMs and electronics companies representing a variety of industries. For over two decades, the ISO 9001:2000 contract manufacturer has helped customers realize the numerous competitive advantages of outsourcing their manufacturing for rapid response, high-mix, low-to-moderate volume PCB assembly. From quick turn to high volume, EMI enhances customers' market position with end-to-end manufacturing solutions. EMI's complete service offerings, proven expertise, and continued investments in new facilities and technologies ensure a winning experience from start to finish. The company has headquartered in Santa Ana. Visit its Web site at www.eminc.com, or call 714-979-2228 for more information.