Ultra Cems - Emerging As A Market Leader
By John Dean
Weymouth based Contract Electronics Manufacturer; Ultra Electronics Manufacturing Services (Ultra CEMS) is part of the very successful £300M+ T/o Ultra Electronics plc group of companies.

Ultra CEMS offer high reliability, low to medium volume, turnkey electronic manufacturing services to a wide range of industries including companies from the Aerospace, Defence, Industrial, Instrumentation, Marine, Medical, Measurement & Control, Oil & Gas, Telecoms and Transportation market sectors.

John Dean, Ultra CEMS Customer Support Manager takes up the story: “We have a growing reputation in the low to medium volume, high reliability market sector. High levels of capital investment have enabled us to greatly expand our SMT and conventional throughput and a focus on in-house training has helped to build our reputation for quality. Although we do some manufacturing for other Ultra divisions, it totals only 15 % of our turnover, and we build products for around 20 other major UK OEMs.

As a division of Ultra Electronics plc, Ultra CEMS has significant purchasing power with particular strengths in obsolescence management, global sourcing and Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI).

Furthermore, Ultra CEMS has a dedicated IPC training school on site to ensure all production staff are trained to a very high standard. As a result, Ultra CEMS offer all their clients IPC-A-610 Class 3 workmanship as standard.

Products can be manufactured under full material traceability conditions. Component failures in the field can be traced back to specific batches of materials and even which assembly operators assembled the product.

Ultra’s business growth has been dramatic, with many new and larger OEM customers now using their one-stop-shop services.

A third SMT line (capable of

0201 placement) complete with seven zone reflow oven for lead free pcb assembly, a top of the range flying probe test capability and a robotic conformal coating station have all been added to the portfolio of capabilities already on offer at Weymouth. Additionally, a further 3,500 sq.ft of floor space has been opened with plans to add more in 2006.

Dean adds “We are one of the first EMS providers in the UK to develop a fully debugged, lead-free PCB assembly line. One of our customers required a very high melting point solder to be used (in excess of 225°C) on the assembly process of their products as a result of the extreme operating temperatures the finished product experienced ‘in situ’. As a result, we developed our lead free capability and have been running our lead free line since July 2004 and now have over 30 products running down it”. This has put us in an excellent position to deliver RoHS compliant solutions for our customers.
“Our main strengths are not our processes and capital investment though, but our people, and the high level of personalised service they provide for each customer. We can help our customers by providing low-cost manufacture and test design advice at their design reviews, and we nurse their boards through the often troublesome prototyping phase.”

Ultra CEMS is now recognised as one of the UK’s premier low to medium volume full turn-key contract electronics manufacturers. The company has aspirations to be the UK market leader for high reliability business.

For further information contact:-

John Dean
Customer Support Manager
Web-Site: www.ultra-cems.com
E-mail: cems@ultra.co.uk

About the Author

John Dean
Customer Support Manager
Web-Site: www.ultra-cems.com
E-mail: cems@ultra.co.uk