Sunstone Circuits is a PCB solutions provider with a difference. They have an almost fanatical attention to customer service. Derek LaBorie spoke to president and CEO Terry Heilman about what makes Sunstone different from your average board shop.

Download the interview as a PDF or read below.

Can you give us the 30,000 ft view of Sunstone and where it fits in the value chain?

Sunstone is a quick turnaround prototyping PCB solutions provider offering in–house pre–production design reviews and the manufacture of boards up to 26 layers and 20" x 24", although our sweet spot is generally in the range of two to six layers and 0.25" x 0.25" to 12" x 14". We have been growing at an average of 20% year–over–year for the last five years. We are based in Mulino, Oregon, and have been in business for more than 35 years.

Terry, the majority of board manufacturing has moved offshore. How does Sunstone compete against Asian competition?

Our strongest asset is our ‘extreme customer support.’ Of course, we have pre–production design reviews and great technical capabilities, but we are a sophisticated Internet–based solution provider. Customers can view the progress of their jobs online, and we are available live, 24/7/365, through our help desk. It is our belief that if you are not prepared to pick up the phone from a customer on a Sunday or a holiday, then you cannot claim to have best–in–class customer service. We do.

You mention miniaturization and other factors are driving manufacturers to adopt a cleaning process. How have these factors changed affected cleaning equipment designs?

So much has changed in the design of defluxing equipment. Twenty years ago, batch–format defluxing equipment were basically mildly converted dishwashers. Back then, coherent (non diffused) flow (like the flow in your household dishwasher) was effective in the removal of higher solids–content rosin–based fluxes from under through–hole and early SMT devices. Today, our customers are frequently removing ultra low solids–content no–clean fluxes from below densely packaged SMT devices with as little as two mil standoffs. Combine higher temperature lead–free alloys and you have a very challenging defluxing process. We have not only had to respond to the current cleaning challenges but also to future challenges. Our customers expect our products to be effective today, and many years from today. Our products must remain technically relevant for as long as possible.

How do you measure your customer service?

The easiest way to measure our success is the 4,000+ new customers we attract each year and the more than 80% customer retention rates. For any company, this is an impressive record.

You say you are not a PCB manufacturer. How would you describe Sunstone?

That’s easy. I would describe us as a ‘solutions provider.’ We are in a position, along with our ECOsystem partners, to provide everything from a bare board design through to the finished product. In essence, the ECOSystem is an open, collaborative environment that provides the knowledge, tools, parts & libraries and manufacturing expertise necessary to produce a fully assembled PCB from quote to delivery.

Through our ECOsystem alliance, we can provide PCB design services, tool workflows through Altium and CadSoft, PCB manufacturing from Sunstone and sourcing and costing of components using Digi–key and LiveBOM. Board design simulation and verification is provided by National Instruments and board assembly and final box build by Screaming Circuits. In all, we currently have nine partners and are open to others who want to participate in this value chain.

How does The ECOSystem tie all these partners together?

The ECOSystem is designed to make the designers’ life easier. It operates without leaving the EDA environment and removes the need for the design engineer to spend hours or days wrangling parts, which helps decrease the time to market and reduce cost while improving communications with purchasing, other members of the design team and the manufacturing supply chain.

Designers can put together a design tool flow that works for their needs.  For many designers, they make use of National Instruments’ (NI) Labview™ for simulation and verification and NI’s Design Suite for layout. For designers needing to design but unable (for whatever reason) to purchase licensed CAD tools from elsewhere, Sunstone provides PCB123, a free–distribution PCB design tool with integrated schematic, layout and interactive BOM management features in LiveBOM. The LiveBOM module, for example, enables real–time access to Digi–Key for source and cost information for the PCB board components as–built. When the designer is satisfied with specification and cost, he can simply press the "Order Now" button to implement the order. Of course, not all design tools provide an "Order Now" button direct to Sunstone. So we continue to work with other CAD tool companies like NI—who is leading the way in this work—but also Altium, CADsoft, and others, to take down those barriers between completion of the design and initiation of the manufacturer. Our design flow work in the ECOsystem targets that exact spot in the designer’s daily life.

The designer can then take the project one step further and enter the parameters into the Screaming Circuits assembly costing tool. In the future this step will also be automated.

What made you embark upon this ECOsystem project?

According to IPC, the designer has 75% of the leverage affecting the costs associated with the PCB and assembled board. It is also true that more than 30% of a design engineer’s time is spent sourcing parts. We believe that a designer can determine yield through good design. It is therefore our job to make the designer’s life easier by providing a suite of complimentary tools to be able to design, verify, specify and cost the entire product through to final box build.

Thank you, Terry.
Derek LaBorie
 

Keywords : Regular Features, Interviews, Interview - Terry Heilman, Sunstone Circuits

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