Just recently, Schlafhorst Electronics (SE) celebrated its fifth anniversary. In 1997, through management buy-out, the partners Manfred Tillmann, Knut Richter and Claus Brunen formed the contract electronic manufacturer. Now, the specialist company based in the Northwestern part of Germany (not far from the borders to the Netherlands) with its staff of over 150 people achieved a turnover of 27m euro with about half a million board assemblies built.
However, this spin-off isn’t a newcomer in this business. Previously, the enterprise had been a section of the textile machinery manufacturing company W. Schlafhorst, whose duty was the development and manufacture of in-house electronics for the spinning and winding machines. With this long background, SE (member of German ZVEI organization for the electrical engineering and electrical industries) can refer to more than 30 years of experience and profound knowledge in its field of competence. The former mother company, a member of the Swiss Saurer Group that is comprised of manufacturers of drive systems, surface technologies and textile machines, continues to be a co-partner of SE.
Products and performance of services
Under the slogan Coming to Concept, the company offers the realization of complete customer projects – from the concept to the finished product. This means the entire service package: from development and design to procurement logistics, board assembly, integrity tests/quality assurance and shipment, right through to the after-sales service. All of these can be obtained from just one single source. From both of its competence centers in West and East Germany, SE provides design and production expertise in proximity to customers. In close co-operation with its patrons, the company designs assemblies, systems and entire products right through to the point of introduction into volume manufacture. Production then can take place at the manufacturing sites in Germany or Eastern Europe (Chech Republic). The customers are mainly recruited – as it always is for mid-sized CEMs – from the HQs region, and are covering the areas of automotive and industry electronics, consumer as well as medical and safety electronics.
Based on a proven platform concept, SE also offers the design of board assemblies and complete products to customer specification. Among the benefits are – in this case – very short design and delivery times, and low cost of such customized solutions. The range of own engineered products is comprised of switched-mode power supplies (SMPS), modules for power drives, industrial control systems and more. Top priority has, of course, the consistent improvement of customer satisfaction and of the operational processes and structures. The company has built up a system collecting data on customer satisfaction, and is monitoring the improvement potential through project groups. Product quality requirements are securely met. The company is certified according to ISO 9001, and customers, especially in the automotive sector, have conducted various audits. A certification is being prepared according to VDA6.3.
SMT and thru-hole are available
Three SMT-assembly lines are in operation, one is a Siplace and the others of Zevatech make. Ekra delivered a paste printer model E5, and the SMT-Wertheim company a Quattro-Peak soldering furnace with a processing length of 4m. The automated placement systems, equipped with vision systems for optical centering of devices, can place components down to 0201-size. This shop-floor environment ensures high flexibility even with large-size PCBs in small batches, and at the same time high-throughput rates with assemblies populated by only a small number of parts.
For thru-hole insertion (performed manually), in addition to the existing Ersa N-Wave 400 nitrogen wave-soldering oven and a conventional-type Streckfuss 2002 MP, the other nitrogen machine N-Wave 500 is capable of handling board assemblies or panels up to 500mm wide. For verification of assembly work and functions, different inspection and test tasks are performed. For these tasks, the following equipment is being employed: Agilent/HP 3065 and 3070 testers and the Ersacope. Repairs are made with Ersa´s semi-automatic IR 500 rework station.
This year, the company will attract the attention of customers not only in Germany and the U.S., but will place special focus on potential customers in the Netherlands, which is in short reach from its HQs. Moreover, the subcontractor will be organizing events, for example, together with the VDI (Association of German Engineers), regarding the subject of manufacture of electronics in mechanical engineering. gbw
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