The legendary Indy Electronics facility in Manteca, Calif.-now nearly two decades old-has a new name, new owners and a new concept about how onshore IC assembly should be handled. Before we get into the details, we should offer a brief historical note: Jake Ratinoff, generally considered the "Father of Contract Assembly," started Indy-Manteca in the very early 1980s, as one of several high-volume packaging facilities. The others were Dynetics in the Philippines, Indy-Mexico and Indy-Scotland. At one time, Indy's employment surged to 1,400 workers in a modern, two-story, 90,000-square-foot building on a 12-acre site. In the last 15 years, the former Indy (usually under a new name), has been owned (in chronological order), by such entities as Connecticut-based Olin Corp., the Bangkok-based Alphatec Group, San Jose's Digital Testing Services (DTS) and ISE Labs, San Jose, an independent test house. Now to the present: The new name is Silicon Turnkey Solutions, headed by President Zef Malik, a well-known luminary in the test world, who bought it with his brother Saeed Malik, Alex Barrios and Larry Jorstad. All are founders of ISE labs. Giant ASE bought ISE labs nearly two years ago for undisclosed millions. ASE's goal was to turn the Manteca facility, some 65 miles east of Silicon Valley, into the Taiwanese company's front-end U.S. presence with high-volume assembly. "When they bought ISE, ASE started a test lab frenzy," recalls Zef Malik. Almost immediately, ASE's competitors rushed in to buy other small test operations. Six months later, ASE decided to close the Manteca plant. Enter the Malik brothers, Barrios and Jorstad, who bought the plant back from ASE Test. "High-volume, standard product manufacturing does not fit in the U.S. domain," believes Malik. "This fact leads us to defy the conventional model that has been practiced by companies like IPAC and move, instead, to a truly niche-oriented, specialized marketplace." Now, says Malik, STS-with a current headcount of 105-has abandoned any plans for onshore high-volume assembly and aims to establish itself as a full-service prototype and quickturn facility for standard products and as a producer of custom packaging. To Malik, "full service" means package engineering and development, assembly, test and qualification. This does not mean that STS will forego volume assembly, however. Malik says he's ready to announce a deal with Global Electronics Manufacturing (GEM), a company in China headed by Richard Kulle, former president of Siliconix.
GEM, located near Shanghai, will provide STS' production volume and is currently assembling and testing between 8 and 10 million units/month. GEM, says Malik, is the only company in the region that is "up and running in volume," with four captive lines dedicated to four very large power management customers. "These customers," adds Malik, "have transplanted their lines from Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Thailand." Malik plans to send all high-volume BGA, PLCC and QFP assembly to China. "We will then add test in China," Malik says. STS is currently providing testing services under a "non-compete" agreement with ISE Labs. That arrangement will expire next May. "Pure-play assembly no longer exists," says Malik, but "pure-play assembly with test is very viable. We see specialty assembly with test as a marketing niche that brings a lot of value. That is where we are changing gears from what this plant has historically produced." Malik says the China venture will become effective during the third quarter. "We believe that we will be able to handle pre-production prototypes of standard products here, capture the cost, and send them to China for volume runs at prices cheaper than Taiwan." Custom Packaging Another of Malik's goals is to steer the Manteca facility towards custom work, including Hi-Rel military packaging, particularly memory. Haitham Hamed joined the company in April as director of strategic business development from ISE Labs. Hamed, says Malik, is chartered to take STS into specialty markets.
"We have already signed an agreement, in principal, with Vertical Circuits Inc. (VCI), a spinoff of TRW Space and Defense," says Malik. VCI makes stacked memory for space applications and flight recorder modules. STS currently produces five-high to nine-high memory modules in conventional packages for VCI. A second area STS intends to embrace, says Malik, is the space avionics market. "We have been successful as a key supplier to TRW, packaging 11 different chips in a very large program. We are now looking at routers and at data transmission device packaging." Malik is also looking eagerly at the biometrics niche, which includes, he says, "basically anything in the sensor market that has to do with a human aspect of identification or recognition, such as optical sensors." Additionally, he is examining some medical applications, and says, "We want to be a player in that market." System-in-Package (SiP) represents another growth area, he believes, "and the first test of our success in that market is a dedicated line we are running for Agilent. We are able to pass on cost savings to them along with competitive cycle times." The Manteca facility has earned a lot of "brand recognition" since Ratinoff's heyday, Malik admits. The recognition, he says, however, "has not always been positive." And that's something the new owners are determined to change. [siliconturnkey.com] Random Jottings Atlantic Technology [atlantic1.co.uk], across the pond in the U.K., and STATS [stts.com], Singapore, recently earned QS9000 certification.
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