Tekmos' Blog

Do you remember seeing the three wise monkey statues, see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil? Did the idea in an odd way seem to make sense to you? While the origin of the proverb, perhaps Buddhist, perhaps Confucian,  is a bit shrouded in mystery, our Western idea seems to have taken hold. If you refuse to acknowledge something, then how can it hurt you? The problem with this approach is that it surely sometimes can. In our business, there is an invisible force that lurks throughout a test floor. You can’t see it, you can rarely feel it, but it can absolutely destroy our product. The culprit is called electrostatic discharge, or ESD. It is basically a type of contact electrification that takes place when certain materials come into contact with one another. It runs rampant in dry environments, or when any friction is involved. Most people understand it as static electricity. As a kid, (or perhaps even as a mischievous adult,) the action of rubbing your feet across a rug, then surprising a younger sibling or other unsuspecting prey with an electric touch to the ear lobe, always brought sinister delight. Static electricity is extraordinarily fun for kids, but it absolutely has no place in our company.

At Tekmos, we understand that semiconductors are particularly prone to damage, or even failure, sometime many months after contact with ESD. We have taken extra precautions to prevent ESD buildup, and prevent the possibility of it affecting our customer product needs. As part of our Quality system, we have an entire procedure dedicated to ESD control. Our test floor technicians and test operators wear antistatic lab jackets, heel straps and have daily checks on grounding wrist straps. They undergo ESD training with recertification every 12 months. Product is moved on grounded carts to grounded workstations, which are tested with a Surface Resistivity Meter once a quarter. This is four times the standard requirement even by military standards. We also control and monitor the temperature and humidity on our test floor, understanding that even the environment can be a part of ESD creation. From non-conductive floor wax, to antistatic garments, heel straps and wrist straps, daily and quarterly checks with continual education and testing, we do the extra effort necessary to keep from creating the invisible enemy of ESD, and protect our customer’s product. We at Tekmos have our eyes open when it comes to ESD. We have decided not to be the monkey, sitting with its eyes closed. 

2013 is almost over, and we have had a good year.  At a minimum, our sales have doubled this year, and we have a good chance to triple sales for next year.

Double and triple digit growths are worthy, but they bring with them new challenges to address that we here at Tekmos enjoy taking on.  You can handle a little growth by working more efficiently and by just working a little harder. Tripling our growth means addressing the bigger picture.

Tekmos’ solution is to change the definition of some jobs, and to delegate into a new level of management. The process of identifying our growth opportunities means concentrating on our products, services, customers, channels and geographic areas that generate the largest proportion of revenue and profits.

An evaluation of the overall performance of Tekmos is ongoing and involves measuring and benchmarking profitability, rate of revenue growth and our reputation with our customers. This year we successfully entered new markets, created new products that appeal to that new customer base and as always, Tekmos provides an outstanding level of customer service. We will continue on that path for 2014.

We are going to make a cautious bet on growth.  We will grow, and be a leader in the semiconductor industry as we have already demonstrated with our high temperature ASICs and Microprocessors for extreme 

Last month I took a trip to Japan to meet with some of our customers.  We have started selling ASIC replacements in Japan.  Many Japanese customers had purchased their ASICs from the major Japanese semiconductor vendors.  And now, those same vendors have been End-Of-Life-ing their products.  This creates the same sort of demand for replacements ASICs as we have seen elsewhere.  And now that we have a partner in Solekia, it is a good time to increase our sales in Japan.

I have been to Japan once before, 25 years ago, on a trip to Osaka.  I had ventured into their subways, and backed right out again for fear of getting terribly lost because I couldn’t read the signs.  The fear never left me, and now I was going to have to face it on this trip.  Fortunately, I have my smart phone, with its’ built in GPS.  This allows me to know where I am, even if I can’t read a station sign.

As is frequently the case, the fear is worse than the reality.  While most station signs were in Japanese, there was always an English sign somewhere, and that was enough to get me to my destination.  My hosts were also concerned that I might disappear before an important meeting, so they met me at the hotel each morning to insure that I did arrive where I was supposed to be, and at the correct time.  I tried to go totally native, but I do admit to a strange longing every time I passed a McDonalds.

We visited two ASIC customers during my trip to Japan.  One was located in Tokyo, while the other was perhaps 200 miles north of Tokyo.  I rode the bullet train there at a speed of 150 mph, which was faster than I had been on a train before, with my old record being 100 mph in the UK.  It was a nice trip, and I enjoyed looking out the window at the countryside.

That area of Japan was near the reactors that were damaged in the Sendai earthquake, and some of the towns had erected public displays of the current Geiger counter readings.  That was interesting, though the readings were just ambient on a sunny day.

About half of our micro shipments are user programmable.  Unfortunately, our different technology means that for the most part, we are not supported by commercial programmers.  And so if the customer is not using something like ISP (In System Programming), then we have to program and label the parts for them.

We can easily program the parts on our automated testers.  Indeed, for larger customers, we include the programming as part of the final test.

The difficult part is in the labels.  We have to have a label and ink that will survive the RoHS surface mount temperature profile of about 250C and the subsequent board cleanings.  And the inexpensive Avery labels won't stand up in that environment.

It turns out that you can buy Kevlar labels that will stand up, and this is what we use.  We also use our barcode printer with the plastic film ink.  The only problem with this is that when we load the labels into the printer, it will waste about two feet of them as it goes through the alignment cycle.  Since that is about $10 worth of labels, this causes me pain, especially since I have to change the labels out when we are done to switch back to regular bar codes.

Eventually, we will replace this with a laser writer.  We have one that we bought at auction, but it is in storage now since we are very short on floor space in our manufacturing area.

Tekmos provides replacements for obsolete ASICs and microcontrollers.  Our customers are those who manufacture systems that have a long lifetime, and are frequently under regulatory control or have technical reasons for not replacing their design.  As a result, they really need our product.  The job of our sales team is to find them. 

But finding them is tough.  Most sales forces call on the design teams, since that is where components are designed in.  However, since obsolescence tends to hit the manufacturing side, opportunities are frequently missed by the normal sales channels.  If we can’t find them, then we have to make it easier for the customer to find us, and that means advertising.

Twenty years ago, advertising was much simpler.  There were a number of free trade magazines that were delivered to key individuals.  All you had to do was to create a clever ad, and wait for the customer to call you.  That was then, and now the internet has killed the magazines.  Perhaps a fifth of our incoming calls are from the magazines themselves, begging us to accept a free subscription.

Nowadays, advertising is being listed by a search engine.  I just did a search for obsolete ASIC, and out of 8.2M hits, we were number 32.  Not bad, considering a number of hits were for ASIC tennis shoes.

Search engine advertising is a two prong effort.  The main activity is through web content, the more, the better.  And that is the main reason we have our newsletter and this blog.  The second prong involves the purchase of ads that are linked to key words.