Customized for the EMS Middle Market

About 2,000 companies supply the worldwide demand for electronic outsourcing services, yet extraordinarily few are geared to do a good job for the middle market.

About 50 such suppliers – all with annual sales over $250 million and a few in excess of $10 billion – command some 88 per cent of the market. Their strength, usually with a global footprint, is to meet the demand for high volume, low mix materials or manufacturing services. These companies might pay lip service to the middle market, but these relative giants will almost always fail to satisfy the legitimate requirements of their middle market customers. Right or wrong, the middle market’s lower volume and typically higher mix requirements fit neither their high speed lines nor their large scale procurement models, and so, when push comes to shove, their middle market customers pay the price of a bad match.

The almost 2,000 other suppliers share the remaining 12 per cent of the market, which translates into annual sales averaging about $5 million and median sales likely around $2 million. Most of these essentially mom and pop companies aspire to “step up” to the middle market, yet their reach usually exceeds available capital resources, and the scope of their claimed service portfolios too often represents a “willingness to learn” rather than a true listing of the actual core competencies they exercise in their day to day work. These suppliers usually turn out to be a bad choice for the middle market as their ambition and good intentions are quickly offset by their inexperience, inadequate resources, and limited capacity.

In contrast, as neither a giant nor a pygmy in its $350 billion industry, AMI is the right size and the best choice for the middle market. Its service portfolio – deployed everyday in its entirety on behalf of its customers – mirrors the scope of the industry’s giants; and its scale – well over 100 employees operating 16/5 – is a comfortable fit for customers with requirements ranging from a few thousand to a few million dollars a year. Put simply, AMI is customized for the middle market.

Proof by one of many possible examples is that for more than a decade AMI has built the field replacement assemblies for a global industrial customer with a vast base of installed products. This work involves about 150 unique assemblies, each built in batches of 25 to 50 once every two or three years. Requirements for success include an infrastructure that effectively sources, prices, schedules, and controls over 800 part numbers; a test center that maintains, calibrates and operates unique test equipment for each of 150 assemblies; and an engineering group that maintains document control, process definition, and UL compliance for a set of products designed perhaps 15 years ago and for which the customer’s present engineers have little memory or first hand knowledge. Clearly, the infrastructure requirements alone would overwhelm the typical mom and pop company, and the work itself – high mix, low volume, variable demand – would be technically unsuitable and of no business interest to the industry’s major players.

AMI is the right size and the best choice for the EMS middle market.