Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Partnering to Get it Made: John Park, AQS”.
We are aqs uh, we are real factory uh. You guys here to see the factory i know uh the the uh. We had a yesterday uh session. That was a really great session. By the way uh.
We had a chance to talk to the a lot more detail, but today’s is uh much shorter and then the uh, i believe, uh, probably uh. You have never been to the factory and uh um. Probably you have some ideas or some products uh. That could be your very first products and probably you heard uh so much about the china side.
Already dr huang talked and many people talked about the china and these days there is a perception of manufacturing. We got ta go to china, yes, that’s true! And yes – and you know i’ll, give you a little more detail about the other side and also uh, i believe, uh, because uh you’re in an early stage. So you don’t have a whole lot of fun, uh um. So there’s many many issues uh and the problems you are facing, so what i would like to do, i like to give you the a very quick uh tour of what is a typical electronic factory, looks like we aqs.
We have five factories, two of them here right in silicon valley, one in fremont, it’s about a eighty thousand square foot, so it’s not small. Maybe eighty thousand is even bigger than this. You know eighty th, we have one of the small one in san jose combine about a hundred thousand square foot total number of employees over 200 people, a lot of engineers, a lot of line workers, a lot of people in china. We have three factories: shenzhen dongguan area dongguan is located near the hong kong, so you want to go to shenzhen donggan from here from sfo. You take the flight, usually non-stop to hong kong and you cross over the border. Maybe one hour it’s right there there’s a shenzhen from shenzhen is a very commercial area, and then you go a little deep inside you see tons of tons of factories.
We have three factories over there, so uh we’ll just go through very quickly uh about. What’S typical typical electronic factories look like and the manufacturing is uh very different than the uh rnd or early stage engineering? When we talk to the engineers you, you have a lot of liberty, a lot of freedom or i can make the things. What i want factory is almost the opposite side. We do what you told me to do it’s a big difference. If you don’t tell me that you know, there’s no bolt and nuts, you get up the products without a bolt and nuts don’t blame on me. It’S not on the bill of material not on the manufacturing process.
Yeah, but then common sense is a. What are you talking about? You know, why is the things are missing? Don’T you know this? What do you mean? You know so there’s a lot of things and also another thing is uh: uh factory is uh uh choosing the factory is uh. I’M a korean american i’ve been here, you know the paying text to irs over 30 years of people still call me.
You know where are you from when i’m here? What are you talking to me? I’M just paying texts to you as my kids, graduating from the college, but still hey whatever, but anyway uh. It’S. We have asian culture.
Marriage is a little different here. Uh you get married, you know whomever you like, but uh korean. Maybe you know, japanese, indian or even chinese.
You know it’s like a marriage. We consider not only between two human beings, but also between two family. So what it is is uh you need to fit.
You need to check the uh whether these two family really fits into in terms of educational level or sometimes school relations, and some how wealthy, how poor and a lot of these things so uh choosing the factory is a very similar. What is the best factory if you have a large volume? Foxconn is a number one. Why? Because they’ll give you the best price and best quality of the service for your large volume? How much is large volume you minimum? You need to begin with the 100 million plus po to begin with it. We call there is a first tier factory, second tier factory and third tier factory.
First tier factory is like a foxconn, so it used to be so knowledge of electronics, seminar, jbl plexus, like these big names. How can we get? There got a big peel, then they’ll roll down the red carpet. If you don’t they don’t even gon na reply, your email, so then we consider second tier second tier is a relatively smaller, usually uh about maybe a couple hundred million to the. Maybe you know the some about the total annual revenue. Definitely less than half billion those companies usually uh as a location in united states, also offshore, probably china or mexico, and there’s a third tier or the even below, is a mom and pop operation. This really small one. So when you choose factory uh, is it right? Timing and then the amount of business and what you are looking for. The most important issue is timing is most important.
You are dealing with the timing issue. You don’t want to spend or waste your time jumping around or go to mexico, china or whatever, there’s many choices available. So since we don’t have a whole lot of time, i’m going to give you a very quick tour of our factory.
How this thing works: oops, moksha, okay, this is our factory and we have uh locations here in china and there’s a freeman location. This is a the line, a pick and uh place, and this reflow and then this is a x-ray technology, an equality issue, big x-ray machine and then the aoi machine, optical inspection, machine and then the bga. If you have fpga programming, you got to use a pga machines and then, if it’s a, we still do a lot of hand, loading things and then the is a magical.
It’S a wave solder uh. Either we use a lead or a non. Let and then the.
If you put a hand, loading got a hand solder and the second hardware, final qc and the functional testing and the testing again, and we do the total box build and we help the uh shipping and uh ems actually offers a lot of different service. The most important service is uh. They give you a lot of engineering support.
You don’t have to do everything you come to the ems factory. They have a lot of engineer not like dr huang mit phd, but we do have a lot of engineers and they’ll. Give you a lot of support and plus certification. That’S another issue. You need to have a ul ce fcc medical device, 510k fta. A lot of certification issue, except many big cm except a 510k cm, can help you to go through the certification issue fairly quickly, and another thing is these days: cm also offers some kind of equity relating deals.
If you don’t have enough money, i know there’s a lot of issues here. You don’t want to go to vc too early they’re, going to take too much your equity. So as long as the first, the most important is, you want to build your prototype and make up some kind of a revenue and then making some kind of a profit just a little bit to reach that point. There is a many good cm out. There can help you so please utilize, all this service. Thank you.
.