Barric currently manufacture a broad range of signal and data cables for both the internal wiring of electronic equipment, as well as for external connections to other systems. They also manufacture cable harnesses for complex power supplies and motor control within electronic systems.
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Barric Help Toby Churchill Bring Quality of Life to Thousands
Contract electronics manufacturer, Barric, has announced that it is working closely with Cambridge company Toby Churchill in the future development of their acclaimed 'text-to-speech' LightWriter technology, a technology that enables the speech impaired to communicate.
Each year, thousands of the LightWriters are shipped around the world, enabling those who have lost their power of speech through injury or disease to communicate via a keyboard that can translate text into spoken words. In many instances this technology can enable text entry through the simple use of buttons or limb movement, allowing severely disabled people the chance to communicate with the world and enjoy a far better quality of life.
"We are currently providing the early stage manufacture of the complex computer board that is at the heart of the new LightWriter system," said Mike Bayley, Director of Business Development at Barric. "The new design uses one of the very latest embedded Xscale microprocessors and a lot of memory and the overall design is very compact and very challenging to manufacture. It’s been one of our toughest projects to date, but very rewarding."
The current LightWriter technology can be programmed with up to 15 languages and a number of voice variants such as male voice, female voice and child voice. The future design will bring a lot more functionality to the LightWriter, extending many of the features that enhance quality of life for its users.
"With the next design, we are really pushing the barriers, especially with regards to the internal technology. It needs to be powerful, yet portable and robust," said John Drake, R&D project resource coordinator. "The engineers at Barric have been enormously helpful. They are very approachable and have been very understanding when we have had to make revision changes at short notice. We have very much benefited from their expertise in surface mount technology and BGA placement technology".
With the hardware developed, the engineers at Toby Churchill are busy developing the software that will further transform the lives of people around the world. They hope to launch the new version sometime in 2007.
What makes this company so special and so expert in this field is that the person after whom the company is named, Toby Churchill, became disabled and lost his speech in the late 1960s following an attack of encephalitis while studying as an engineering student. Dissatisfied with the communication aids then available, he designed the first Lightwriter for his own use and, after meeting other people with similar needs, started to manufacture them. In addition to Toby's contribution of the LightWriter, his company has created other technological products that continue to transform the lives of physically and mentally challenged people.
"It feels good to be working on a project that will have such a positive impact on peoples lives," said Mike Bayley. "Toby Churchill are a very special company and we are very pleased to be working with them."
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Barric Appoints Mike Bayley To European Sales Position
Contract electronics manufacturers, Barric, have appointed Mike Bayley as Director of Business Development and Marketing. Mike has worked at Barric for over 20 years having held several senior technical positions. His appointment is a part of Barric's current growth strategy and is intended to help Barric ensure that existing customers continue to receive the high quality of service for which Barric has become known, as well as winning new customers from across Europe.
"What makes Barric successful, is the fact that the management team each have many years of hands-on electronic manufacturing experience," said Karl Hain, Managing Director of Barric. "Mike's experience with surface mount and BGA technology is extensive and his understanding of industry issues such as lead-free regulations, procurement and quality systems makes him an ideal person to take on the critical role of managing the relationships we have with our customers."
Although Barric's core expertise is the manufacture of embedded electronics, using high speed pick and place technology, Barric also undertake complete product manufacturing and have a specialist cable-assembly manufacturing department. Since the company's formation thirty years ago, Barric have undertaken projects for many of the world’s leading technology companies, ranging from automotive systems to marine safety systems.
"This is an exciting appointment," said Mike Bayley. "I think Barric are now a leader in this field, there are very few companies that can match Barric's technology, inspection systems and expertise. My main role will be to work with our clients from the design stages into the early stages of production. Working with our customers in the early stages of design we can ensure that the design is optimised for manufacture and in-field reliability - both of these aspects can have a big impact on the profitability of the overall project and its success in the marketplace."
Barric are based in Diss, Norfolk and currently manufacture products for customers as far away as the US. One of Barric's recent projects seems to confirm that there is a trend emerging whereby European manufacturers are starting to bring projects back to Europe from locations of low wage economies. Although recent out-sourcing strategies have put Asia and Eastern Europe in the spotlight, manufacturers are increasingly looking at on-shoring opportunities closer to home in response to higher than anticipated total landed costs, quality issues, longer lead times, port congestion, higher fuel costs and maybe also as a part of their environmental strategies.
"Yes, we are currently manufacturing a product that was being made in Eastern Europe," said Mike. "The UK owners of the product came to us because they had suffered from recurrent quality issues that involved the managers in a lot of air travel. Since we have been working with this company we have advised them of several design changes that have not only improved quality but have also improved production rates."
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RoHS – Surviving The Changes !
For contract manufacturers across Europe, 2006 will be regarded as a very challenging year. During 2006, these companies had to ensure that their manufacturing procedures complied with the RoHS lead-free regulations. The RoHS regulations have been created to safeguard the environment from the considerable amount of lead found in waste electronics products and has meant that the entire electronics industry has had to undergo a massive change, removing lead from the majority of electronic components and assemblies.
One such company undertaking this transition has been contract electronics manufacturer Barric.
"It's been a very tough year, there is no point in pretending otherwise," said Mike Bayley, Director of Business Development. "We've been manufacturing electronics for over 20 years and were in better shape than most to absorb the impact of RoHS, but many aspects of the change to lead-free were beyond our control."
Barric found that a major problem was that of component supply. Very often an entire shipment of electronic assemblies would be held up for a single lead-free part that was subject to an extended delivery time. Although Barric had worked closely with all of their clients on the transition to lead-free manufacture, being unable to ship product was enormously frustrating for both parties and also put considerable pressure on the company's cash flow and profitability.
 (New flow solder equipment)
An unexpected dilemma was also that many traditional lead based components suddenly became 'end of life' even before the RoHS deadline, as manufacturers wanted to exhaust their stock. This meant that even products that were exempt from the RoHS regulations were impacted by the change.
"We have some key projects, that although exempt, we have had to invest a lot of energy with our clients to find a way forward, simply because the components we need are no longer available," said Mike Bayley.
In terms of the actual manufacturing of RoHS compliant electronics, Barric have come to regard this as the easy part of the process. The main change has been in the investment of a new oven that can deliver seven temperature zones. The new lead-free components require a higher temperature due to the new material that has replaced lead. The real challenge is that chips such as BGA's are at risk of damage at such high temperatures, as is the PCB itself. The new oven provides very sophisticated temperature control to ensure good solder flow without risk to components. In addition to this, Barric also invested in a state of the art thermal profiling tool and predictive thermal profiling software to ensure they were able to meet the exacting requirements for manufacturing the new lead-free components.
(Karl Hain with thermal profiling equipment)
"In terms of the manufacturing, we have had very few problems. There has been a lot of technical support available to help us understand the issues and the new technology," said Mike Bayley. "This side of things has run very smoothly."
Barric claim that after the major issue of sourcing critical components, the next biggest challenge was simply the logistics of managing the transition from lead to lead-free. Barric had to duplicate their goods inwards systems, to accommodate both lead and lead-free components, ensuring that each were kept separate and were easily identifiable.
"We've had to introduce new part codes, a colour label scheme and even separate areas in the factory to ensure that the lead and lead-free manufacturing were able to run side by side," said Mike Bayley. "Fortunately, because we are accredited by BSI with BS EN ISO9001:2000, we were equipped and understood the nature of 'traceability', so were able to adopt this aspect of RoHS without making too many changes to our booking-in and administration systems."
Barric's experience was that most of their challenges were away from the factory floor. Indeed, one of the biggest challenges was informing their clients of the new regulations and helping to bring about the necessary design changes. Barric management were surprised how few of their clients understood the RoHS regulations and at an early stage the Barric team put together an informative and detailed newsletter to send out to each clients. This went a long way to help Barric prepare with their clients for the changes they would be making.
A year on and Barric feel that they are now over the worst and are hoping for smoother 2007.
"Significant credit for our success during 2006 is due to the efforts of our Purchasing Manager, Paul Jay," said Mike. "He has spent many hours over the year scouring the world for components so that we can meet our clients deliveries, without a doubt, this has been key to our success with the RoHS side of things this year."
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Barric Launches New Brand After 20 years of Electronics Manufacturing
UK contract electronics manufacturer, Barric, has undergone a complete new branding. With a new logo, website and advertising message , Barric are looking forward to the next stage in the company's development. The new branding is intended to reflect Barric's increasing expertise in manufacturing complex electronics and also the fact that in recent years they have become an international player in this market, with clients as far away as the US.
"Over recent years we've been investing heavily in modern equipment and expertise, to ensure we are at the leading edge of electronic manufacture." said Karl Hain, Managing Director. "Barric has become a far more technically advanced company over the years and we are also working more in overseas markets, so we felt the need to bring our branding up to date and give it more of a global message."
Barric's customers include global microprocessor developers, automotive electronics companies, domestic and broadcast audio systems and marine navigation sensing and detection equipment . Their key expertise is in delivering high quality , rapid prototype and volume production of surface mount and conventional through-hole electronics. For many customers they also provide component sourcing and complete product manufacture.
"After 20 years in business , we like to think that we're experts in this field," said Karl. "There are very few projects we can't handle. With many projects we help at the very early design stages, as this can often influence final production costs and in field performance and reliability. I guess the new branding also reflects the way we have increasingly become trusted 'partners' in our clients projects rather than just a contract manufacturer."
Much of Barric's recent investment has been in automated inspection systems, BGA rework & reball technology and X-Ray analysis equipment. A part of Barric's future strategy is to offer these services to companies who currently manufacture their own electronics but may need access to this expensive specialist technology in order to meet quality targets.
"As electronic devices have become so much smaller and far more complex, the testing and inspection of electronics has become a whole new science ," said Karl. "In order to meet the very high quality standards expected in today's market, we've had to invest in a range of very expensive X-Ray and automated optical inspection systems. In addition to this, we have had to develop many new skills and understanding. We feel confident there are a lot of technology companies who would benefit from having access to this part of our business.
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Contract manufacturer Barric partners with XJTAG for boundary scan solution
CAMBRIDGE, England, December 16, 2005 – Barric Limited (www.barric.co.uk), a UK based contract electronics manufacturer, has selected XJTAG as its boundary scan test solution partner. The XJTAG system has been implemented at Barric's 12,000 square foot production facility at Diss in Norfolk, England.
The powerful and easy-to-use XJTAG boundary scan Development System meets the growing market need for a cost-effective solution for testing tightly-packed printed circuit boards populated with JTAG devices such as ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale devices, which cannot be tested by traditional methods.
According to Barric, since introducing XJTAG the company has seen production yields increase significantly. "The XJTAG system is an excellent and highly versatile product which has transformed the way we test complex printed circuit boards populated with BGA devices," said Simon Bayley, technical director at Barric.
"XJTAG is easy to use, requires no training, enables rapid fault diagnosis and consistently gives us 80% test coverage across digital circuits," added Simon Bayley. "We can now test our boards in a matter of minutes rather than hours and we have reduced the number of more complex board faults. This is good news for customers and for our overall efficiency as these boards typically contain large and expensive chips such as FPGAs, which we do not want to hold in our inventory any longer than necessary."
 (Patrick Kibble and Simon Bayley of Barric with Simon Payne of XJTAG)
Barric provides a range of electronics manufacturing services from prototyping and new product introductions through to printed circuit assembly, system build and repair. The company offers low volume, high mix, high-technology manufacturing and specialises in prototyping as well as short run and batch production of printed circuits.
"We opted for the XJTAG system ahead of competitive products due to its price, speed of development and because the technical support was excellent," added Simon Bayley. "In addition, because the test scripts are device rather than board-centric in XJTAG, we are able to reuse them on different projects - this is a major benefit for a company that manufactures numerous different board designs for multiple customers each month."
Barric works for variety of original equipment manufacturers across communications, medical, industrial and consumer markets. Having a sophisticated boundary scan solution is becoming a prerequisite and many customers are already using XJTAG during the board design and development stage.
"We manufacture a dozen or so different development boards for one Cambridge-based company and work closely with their designers to ensure that XJTAG is optimised to best effect," said Sarah Green, test engineer at Barric. "Using XJTAG, the designer or developer can automatically select or 'pack' all the relevant data for a particular board – BSDL files, netlists, XJEase files, pin mapping files etc. – and forward this to our production team. This streamlines the whole development process and ensures that the yields are kept high and that any recurring issues are looped back to the design stage for rectifying."
The powerful and easy-to-use XJTAG Development System is designed to cut the cost and shorten the development cycle of electronic products and provides a unique solution that can test JTAG as well as non-JTAG devices. XJTAG can test a high proportion of a circuit including ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale devices, SDRAMs, Ethernet controllers, video interfaces, Flash memories, FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), microprocessors and many other devices. XJTAG also enables In-System Programming of FPGAs, CPLDs (Complex Programmable Logic Devices) and Flash memories.
The XJTAG Development System can migrate through the product life cycle from early design to field support and repair. XJTAG enables circuit designers to shorten the development cycle and prototyping process by facilitating early test development, early design validation of CAD netlists, fast generation of complex functional tests and test re-use across circuits that use the same devices. XJTAG test scripts are also re-usable and portable across different boards, due to the novel device-centric approach that the designers have adopted.
Simon Payne, chief executive at XJTAG, said: "XJTAG is becoming a popular choice for contract manufacturers who are under pressure to improve yields and because of the prevalence of BGA devices on modern printed circuits need to complement their in-circuit, functional or flying probe test equipment with a cost-effective boundary scan solution."
For more information about the XJTAG Development System, please contact XJTAG, The Irwin Centre, Scotland Road, Dry Drayton, Cambridge CB23 8AR, UK. Telephone +44 (0) 1954 213888, facsimile +44 (0) 1954 211565 or email info@xjtag.com. Alternatively, visit www.xjtag.com.
About XJTAG (www.xjtag.com)
XJTAG is a specialist design and test tool developer. Its JTAG (Joint Test Action Group) development system offers a competitive solution for designers and developers of electronic circuits. Utilising XJTAG allows the circuit development and prototyping process to be shortened significantly by facilitating early test development, early design validation, fast development of functional tests and test re-use across circuits that use the same devices. The company is based in the UK at The Irwin Centre, Dry Drayton, Cambridge. XJTAG is part of the Cambridge Technology Group (www.cambridgetechgroup.com).
What is JTAG?
Advances in silicon design, such as increasing device density and, more recently, ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale packaging, have reduced the efficacy of traditional electronic circuit testing methods. In order to overcome these problems and others; some of the world's leading silicon manufacturers combined to form the Joint Test Action Group (JTAG). The findings of this group were used as the basis for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) standard 1149.1: Standard Test Access Port and Boundary Scan Architecture and subsequently the standard became known as JTAG.
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Barric Appoints Energi Technical Marketing to Let The World Know
Technology marketing specialists Energi have won a contract to provide future marketing services to UK electronics manufacturer Barric. Energi will be helping to grow Barric's worldwide customer base and will be advising on all aspects of marketing, including branding, web design, advertising, internet marketing, sales training and press relations.
"This is great fit for Energi," said Richard Blackburn, Managing Director at Energi. "Barric are very much at the forefront of electronic manufacturing and with their tremendous expertise and state of the art surface mount manufacturing equipment, I think Barric is set to be an important player in the European technology sector. It's certainly an exciting role for Energi."
Barric provide electronic manufacturing services for a broad range of European technology companies as well as having customers around the world. With over 30 years experience, Barric has manufactured electronics for products such as forecourt petrol pumps, high quality audio systems, broadcast equipment, transport logging systems and automotive steering systems. Barric has also been working closely with one of the worlds leading microprocessor development companies to provide reference design circuit boards for the early stage development of embedded computer technology.
"Over the recent years we have invested in a lot of exciting technology such as our automated optical inspection systems, 3D X-ray inspection technology and surface mount rework stations," said Mike Bayley, CEO of Barric. "We have been aware of Energi's success in communicating both the technical and commercial benefits of this kind of technology to the engineering sector, so we are very pleased to be taking on their services. Energi will help us keep in touch with our existing customers as well as helping us to attract new projects from across Europe and the rest of the world."
Key to Barric's future marketing strategy has been the launch of their new website at www.barric.co.uk . This new website more accurately reflects Barric's manufacturing technology and will also provide Barric's customers with a 'on-line tracking' system to enable customers to check the progress of the production of their products in real time.
About Energi
Energi Technical Limited are experts in the marketing of engineering and technology. With many years experience in engineering and sales and marketing, Energi assists hi-tech companies and engineering companies to turn their skills and technology into sustainable revenue. Energi is able to provide marketing consultancy, brand development, web design, press relations services, editorial creation and placement and technical sales training. Energi have a solid record of helping clients achieve revenue growth and improved market position. www.energi-tech.co.uk
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More about Barric's electronics manufacturing services
More about Barric's electronics manufacturing equipment
More about Barric's SMT and BGA PCB Rework and Repair Facilities
The Barric management team |
