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Gene Holmes, managing director and co-founder of HCD, talks to Steve Rogerson in our series of interviews for CIEonline.
Gene and Carol Holmes founded HCD around 15 years ago. Initially it was a PCB design house, but gradually moved into offering prototyping then full production CEM services at the request of its client base. This experience means that Gene and Carol are very keen on having a local electronics infrastructure – good local PCB manufacturers, component suppliers and so on, as this means the company can be very flexible. Flexibility is also why HCD is so keen on training and apprenticeships to build up a highly skilled workforce.
Gene is very keen on design for manufacture (DFM): starting as a PCB design house, then supporting the design activity with prototype manufacture starting with just one board, HCD has gained a lot of insight into the DFM process. Now the company also offers further full turnkey manufacturing services and cable assembly so is in an even better position to see the benefits of good design up front – and to advise on how to achieve it.
In his limited spare time, Gene like motorbikes and music.
1. What do you think could be done to improve apprenticeship schemes in the UK?
I think apprenticeships need to have a higher profile with more publicity from the government and more help from the government. We are very keen to get young people into the design side of things and our fourth employee was an apprentice.
To improve the schemes, there needs to be financial support and help with courses. The lack of courses is disappointing. We get some help in the first year but after that it is up to the companies to fund it. I don’t say the courses should be free, but they should be subsidised.
We had a guy who had to change course half way through because the college dropped the course because there wasn’t enough take-up.
2. How important do you believe design for manufacturing is for the electronics industry?
It is the most important thing. If you don’t understand how it is made, how can you design it? Before our apprentices get their hands on a CAD system, they will build boards so they can understand the process involved.
It is astonishing when you see some designs where the person who did the design has no knowledge of the manufacturing process. You then have to spend time sorting that out.
This is fundamental. The problem is there is a lot of pressure on engineers to do their own layouts. The days of the drawing office are long gone. So it is down to the electronics engineers, but they don’t necessarily understand the manufacturing process. This is something that just doesn’t seem to be getting across.
We encourage our designers to talk to the people running the machines so they know what to do to keep the cost down and make it more reliable.
3. How can the UK compete in manufacturing against cheaper factories in both Eastern Europe and the Far East?
Pretty easily. We are doing a good job here, but we don’t deal with the low-tech, high-volume products. There have been some goods coming back from China to be made over here because of rising labour costs and shipping costs.
Where we can have an edge is in the high-tech, high-reliability, low-volume market with a quick turnaround.
With the high-tech boards, they don’t even look at China now because they will have to send engineers out there if there is a problem and the yields are not good. We work to 100 per cent yields. So we can be much more competitive on that kind of build and we are seeing jobs coming back to the UK.
We are quite busy. We are a little bit unique in being a design company that has moved into manufacturing. But others doing high-tech work all seem to be busy at the moment.
4. What is it you like about motorbikes?
I used to race when I was much younger but now I just restore them. I was one of those kids who took things apart. I like fixing things. I have a 40-year-ol Triumph and a 30-year-old Motorcross bike that I’m working on.
I still ride when I can though the wife doesn’t like me going out on a bike. I go to the odd race, but not as much as I’d like to.
5. In the past year, you’ve moved into the military and aerospace sector. How different is it working for that market?
For us, it wasn’t a great shift in the way that we work as we have always worked to a high standard. We always produce very high quality boards. So, from a quality point of view it wasn’t a problem.
Getting to grips with the paper trail was a little hard. The military want full traceability on components and we had to put all that in place.
They came to us initially. We worked for three or four large companies and three of them came to us for design engineering work on military projects and that progressed to manufacturing. We have a stand this year at DSEI. Because of the amount of military work we are getting, we thought we would do that but until now we haven’t gone out looking for it; it has found us.
