Our customers include:
Optimum Design is a diversified EMS company providing design and assembly services for electronic products. Our teams (circuit design, PCB layout, SMT assembly, system integration) have developed proven methodologies that optimize the cost and quality of electronic products. Our methods are used by some of the world’s most sophisticated companies, including Intel, Boeing, Honeywell, Agilent, Varian, and Texas Instruments.
We deliver amazing prices by being open book and relentlessly driving out costs for PCB Assembly and System Integration procurements. Our focus is high end work for demanding customers. We typically reduce costs 5-15%, maintain 98% OTD, and have a phenomenal quality record for even the toughest products.
Choosing new EMS companies is a very risky undertaking. Our trusted methods focus on eliminating this risk. We make a simple promise to our customers: We'll do whatever it takes to meet your needs. You can ask them.
We like challenges. We like the "impossible". We know you wish it was different, but your scheduling is volatile and that's just the way it is. So we do whatever it takes to meet your needs, including working 24/7 and demanding our suppliers work 24/7 too.
More than 75% of our revenue comes from outside the state of California. Our unusually broad reach means we know what it takes to be successful with you no matter where you are. We think personal relationships are key so we fly a lot.
Our customers range from start-ups to multi-billion dollar giants. What they have in common is a need for high level process sophistication that meets their audit requirements, a desire for high quality work delivered on time at a great price, and most importantly a high level of attention and flexibility.
Our state-of-the-art SMT lines place almost any package down to 01005. We process leaded and unleaded, and have hand solder and selective solder capability for through hole. Our design team executes over 300 designs a year and has done so for 25 years, so yes, we've done that. And please, ask us if we do RF.
We are considered a leading authority on PCB design and are the exclusive provider of starter libraries to Mentor Graphics. We have been published in EE Times, Avionics Today, EMSNow, Printed Circuit Board Design & Fabrication, and many others. We are a featured commentator on EMS issues, and are members of the IPC Government Relations Committee advocating before Congress and federal agencies on behalf of the industry. We have won the Mentor Leadership Award and this year are in the INC 5000 for the 3rd time.
Our expectation of ourselves is to dazzle customers. We define "dazzle" as being unexpectedly excellent.
The first two years of a contract manufacturing relationship are not very profitable for the EMS. Stable long term customers are the bedrock of successful EMS companies. The only way to get long term customers is to be laser focused on delivering customer satisfaction...for years. If customers are satisfied, profits will come in time.
We don't pursue purchase orders, we pursue long term partners. Since we are selective about who we work with, your team is never distracted and our environment is very focused. This allows us to concentrate only on productive customers, and the result is we have not lost an EMS customer since entering the business.
Here's the thing with awards. They're nice to mention on the website. But they cause enormous distractions for our team (who absolutely do not lose industry competitions), while doing nothing for our customers. So we just don't enter them any more, we'd rather win the customer satisfaction derby.
Our careful approach to customer engagements is highly unusual for our industry. Many EMS companies are happy to take any order, and the result is high customer churn. In this way we're old fashioned. An EMS relationship is a professional marriage, and the better we know and understand each other, the better we will ride out inevitable rough spots together. The closer we are to your business, the better we can tailor inventory committments and capital equipment acquisitions to your requirements.
But our careful engagements with customers who are a good fit for the long term has defined our success and proven to be extremely beneficial to our customers.
Give customers the same advice we'd give our Mom. Treat every build as if we were building it for ourselves. Provide intangible, off book value. The kind you can't measure. Tell the truth. Don't lie. Do everything possible to fix it, but tell the truth. Be awesome. Be unstoppable. Work with customers who feel the same.
Optimum Design was founded in 1991 as a PCB design bureau by Nick Barbin (a Top Gun Award winner himself, Nick is our President) and Roger Hileman (Optimum is the 5th successful company Roger started, he is our CFO) and is now a diversified EMS company in the INC 5000 for the third time in 5 years. In 2008 the company expanded into contract manufacturing and used lean principles to unlock the quality and efficiency benefits of having design and manufacturing experts located under one roof.
Nick Barbin (left) with Congressman Eric Swalwell at Optimum's
headquarters in Pleasanton, CA
