Case Studies
Issue No. 3 - December/ 2001/january
Entech’s Close Circuit
Entech was born in 1986 when a team of electronics entrepreneurs working on an Education Department project decided they liked working together. Founder, Doug Brown still calls himself “a high school teacher with an interest in electronics”.
After subcontracting work to Codan Electronics and local printed circuit board (PCB) fabricators, the original team decided in—house fabricating was needed and acquired a Sydney firm, Toldale Electronics, which designed and built peripherals for NEC computers. Toldale had prototyping capability, which set the Entech pattern — design and test for a client, then pass the prototype on to a manufacturer.
A big expansion phase began during the late 1980s. During the RAM crisis, where the price of chips rocketed from $2.50 to $22 very quickly, Entech fortuitously discovered the benefit of warehousing. Having many chips in stock gave the company a significant competitive advantage.
The resultant business boost gave Entech acquisition power, which was used to diversify; acquisition of CPM&S gave the group a window into retail. Growth has been steady since.
In February 2001, the Manufacturing Group gained product assembly and test capability with a new 1500m2 facility, which immediately began manufacturing a range of Australian—designed high density data storage devices for export to North America, Asia, and Europe.
Entech is managing that project on a turn—key basis: all component procurement, product assembly, integration, test, and final shipment is managed as a total solution to the customer.
Demand for this product range is expected to exceed a million units in the medium term.
Doug describes Entech as a “hard network” of three divisions which cooperate but are independent. Entech Manufacturing, Entech Prototyping and Entech Graphics have different shareholdings, but common core functions through a shared administration facility.
Manufacturing focuses ...
