Bert Schippers and Lynne Hoverson founded Schippers & Crew, Inc. in January of 1990.  2010 marks our 20^th Anniversary in Electronics Manufacturing Services!  Much has been accomplished during our first 20 years of operation.  Below is a year by year summary of events in our history

 

1989
While working full time as Production Manager & Purchaser at a local OEM where Lynne Hoverson heads the finance division, Bert Schippers works on contract assembly jobs for a small number of customers.
1990
Culminating several years of related electronics and finance experience, Bert and Lynne decide to go full time into the contract manufacturing business. The decision is made by "instant survey" - since there is some demonstrated demand for this service, there must be more! Sharing the sales and marketing functions, in the first 2 months Lynne logs 1,500 cold calls, an arduous task, to introduce the new company and expand the customer base. By the end of the first year, Schippers & Crew has 27 customers.
Like many startup companies, the first location is the family home. The name Schippers & Crew is picked. Bert is "Schippers" and Lynne’s children are the original "Crew." In mid-1990 (with the help of the proverbial family loan) the first commercial space is leased and the first wave solder machine and assembly benches purchased. By the end of the year, the Crew is expanding, too, adding part-time employees. We hold our first Open House on Wednesday, August 8, 1990, so proud of our vast 1100 square feet of nearly empty but clean tables and shelves and opportunity!
1991
1991 is a year of steady expansion - we increase our number of customers and more than quadruple our sales! Late in the year we double our space by leasing another 1100 square feet on the 1st floor of the building directly below our original space.
1992
The Crew switches to full time employment, stabilizing production schedules and increasing efficiency. As the Crew continues to grow, Bert and Lynne see their employees getting married, buying cars and homes, and starting families. They suddenly realize their greater burden of responsibility as employers for the continued survival and growth of the company to maintain the jobs their employees are relying upon. In August of 1992, we begin offering Turnkey services!
1993
Expanding our space for the second time we add another 1000+ square feet. This gives us more space for assembly and also room for a training area! From the very beginning, statistics have been kept, charted and used to monitor the performance of the company. As the company grows and increases production for its customers, the weekly graph bars on the production chart reach higher and higher up the wall each month. Finally one month the bars reach the top of the wall, cross the ceiling, and hang down from the rafter! After this, a new graph scale has to be arranged. We receive more and more queries for SMT assembly from existing customers. Bert attends the Nepcon show for the first time, doing research on assembly and SMT Equipment to be able to continue servicing customer needs. We decide to set up an SMT line. By August we have our first line up and running and we are in the SMT business! Our first line consists of an Asymtek dispenser for solder paste dispensing, 2 Okano pick and place machines, and a Centech vapor phase reflow machine. With the addition of our SMT equipment we find ourselves short of work space in October of 1993. But just then the remaining area on our floor becomes available, and we expand our space again! This brings our space total to around 4000 square feet.
1994
In 1994 the company becomes a corporation. We continue to increase the volume of work done in all areas - through-hole, SMT and Turnkey services. We acquire our first company-owned delivery vehicle, a Dodge mini-van! During this year we get busier and busier. The aisles grow narrow with the amount of work in the shop. Having run out of space we can expand into in our current building, we begin a search for a new space! In total we review about 30-50 potential buildings before we are certain we have found the correct one. We begin lease negotiations. We also begin research for further SMT equipment purchases - we’re doing more and more SMT work and conclude that this is one of the trends of the future. Bert attends Nepcon again to do equipment research. It is a good year - we almost double our sales from the previous year!
1995
Our 5 year anniversary! We look back and see the progress we’ve made, from a mere startup to a company of 30 staff. The company feels "so big" when the 5-year anniversary stickers arrive! The Crew continues to grow in number and in cultural diversity. People born in Holland, Vietnam, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Laos, Minnesota, Cambodia, California, Thailand, Ivory Coast and Mongolia have worked together at Schippers & Crew. This makes for the best potluck gathering ever, with ethnic dishes from so many areas of the world. Lease negotiations for our new space continue and in May we sign! This paves the way for tenant improvements to get underway, and of course the huge task of planning the move! We devote immense time to space layout planning for optimum work-flow, noticing every time the construction crew starts to wall in an area which should be a window instead, and only accepting alterations in the plan when we run into major problems such as the understandable unwillingness of the landlord to move the plumbing across the building. During the year, we select and purchase more surface mount and through-hole assembly equipment - equipment that won’t even fit into our older facility! We get our first brand new pick and place machine, a Mydata TP9-2U.  Also purchased are a used Electrovert wave solder machine and Treiber in-line washer among other items. Most of these are moved into our new space while the tenant improvements are being made. Our move finally takes place at the end of July and at the beginning of August we start in the new facility! The move is a huge task--we underestimate it and the setup time. Though we do produce and deliver during the first week, a good portion of it is also spent unpacking and organizing, etc.     We hold an open house in September for customers and vendors, and finally in October our new Mydata pick and place machine arrives and is installed! We are excited about it’s potential and the improvement in performance over the previous machines, which are soon retired.           As much larger contracts are being won and increasingly more customers are being served, the company’s growth creates opportunities for some of its employees to take on more responsibilities and leadership roles.
1996
1996 is a year of continued expansion. In November, we exhibit for the first time at the Northcon show, a local conference and convention for the electronics industry. This enables us to promote to new potential customers, and meet and talk to many customers, vendors and representatives. Also, during this year we create a new brochure, launch our website for the first time, and begin using email.
1997
We continue assembling and promoting. Our Marketing Manager continues to send out our ever-popular newsletter, and updates the format to 4 pages sent out every other month. Near the end of the year we are finally able to add medical insurance to the expanding list of benefits for our employees.
1998
We improve our SMT line in 1998 by adding a new larger reflow machine, and improve capabilities in our cable unit by adding wire cut and strip equipment. We place our first BGA. X-ray inspection results reveal complete success! We become a member of AEA, the American Electronics Association, and again exhibit at the Northcon show.
1999
In 1999 we make significant additions to our management team, adding both a new Production Manager and for the first time, a full-time Engineering Manager, both with many years of experience in electronics manufacturing. On the equipment side, we add ICT (In-Circuit Test) capabilities with our HP3070 testing machine. We add a brand new Mydata MY12 pick and place machine. The MY12 is capable of fine pitch placement and much higher speeds than our original Mydata machine. Both of these additions help position us to be able to deliver more to our existing and potential customers. We add a Test Engineer to our staff. His job is to support our test department, especially the programming and test development on our HP3070 ICT machine.
2000
We arrive at our 10th Anniversary!!! We have grown so much over the years - from just 1100 square feet to 12,000; from a few employees to over 40! In March we make the decision to upgrade our wave-soldering machine and washer - trading in the older machines to purchase brand new ones.   The quality and performance of the new machines is immediately visible in circuit boards run through them. Perfecting the new wash system is a DI (de-ionized) water system which supplies the final rinse and ensures true cleanliness of the assemblies. We celebrate the 10 years and the new equipment with an open house in June, inviting customers, vendors and friends and family to come visit. In September we increase our space by adding another 3000 square feet to support box build - final assembly and packaging services. In October, we once again exhibit at the Northcon show, this time located at the Mydenbauer Center in Bellevue. Our candy bowl is unofficially the best of show…
2001
2001 brings about more improvements to our management team, and once again, more new equipment! In the middle of the year we aquire two machines to support our expanding surface mount area and the BGA processes: a brand new Conceptronic 7-zone reflow oven, and a Conceptronic Freedom 3000 BGA/SMT rework and prototyping system. The reflow oven adds to our SMT throughput, as well as capability, since larger and longer reflow machines are needed for larger and denser boards, including those with BGAs. The BGA rework system enables us to remove and replace BGAs easily and extremely accurately, as well as performing other types of rework.
2002
2002 brings many challenges, number one being the global "recession". We see orders pushed out in a number of the industries we serve, and we weather it the best we can by promoting and producing. Nevertheless, we attend the APEX show in San Diego where we review new equipment and learn more about what is happening in the industry. We leave with a small wish list… The middle of the year marks our official first year of volume BGA services delivered. We have placed over 1000 BGA’s with zero rejects! This is a testament to our BGA team and the equipment purchased last year to support this service! We add a new capability to our Engineering department with the acquisition of CircuitCam and Checkpoint manufacturing software. This allows us to program our pick and place machines off-line, keeping our machines working while we set up new jobs.
2003
We start this year off with more new equipment! In January, we install an AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) machine - this is a machine that will visually inspect circuit boards for missing parts, orientation and even color bands and nomenclature on the components. This is especially useful for inspecting SMT assemblies, since the parts are getting so small it can be difficult and time-consuming to inspect via microscope. Then in February, we receive and install TWO high-speed Europlacer Vitesse pick and place machines! The addition of these machines increases our SMT capacity by 800%! Each machine has dual heads, each head with 8 turret-style nozzles, which move so quickly that it is hard to follow with the naked eye! In line with the receipt of the above machines, we reorganize the layout of our shop and make a number of improvements to make the work flow more smoothly.
2004
This year was a year of continued production and increased sales & marketing activity.  There were no major equipment acquisitions, but we did make a shop layout change, expanding our inventory room by 2.5x.  This is in support of our expanding turnkey services.   In December, ever one pulled together to play a big delivery game – at the end of the month we’d had our largest production every in the month of December, and we beat our production numbers of 2003!
2005
We hit our 15th Anniversary!!!   We host a very successful Open House and Anniversary celebration in May – with highest every attendance!    A bit hit at our open house is our new Dage X-ray Inspection machine, which we acquired earlier in the year at the Apex show.  This machine will support or BGA and lead-free processes, and allows us to offer a new stand-alone x-ray inspection service. Our open house was followed by an Employee 15Th Anniversary party at the Rock Salt restaurant on Lake Union, complete with awards, historical review and of course great food. In September we purchased and installed a new EKRA X2 screen printer to support our expanding SMT production.  We also expanded our test capability by adding J-Tag Boundary Scan testing to our services available. LEAD-FREE! --- September also marked our first delivery of lead-free assemblies!  Much work has gone into (and is continuing to go into) the processes and procedures required to assemble and test lead-free assemblies.  In the 4th quarter of 2005, increasing orders prompted us to play a big game of achieving a highest ever production delivered, for the quarter and for the year.  Big targets were set, new employees hired, and lots over over-time work put in.  It got down to the wire, but in the end we reached our goal of highest ever production and sales!  As 2005 came to a close, we achieved new highest-ever for most of our key statistics!
2006
2006 started out busy – there was no lag in demand after the holidays of 2005!  In fact, we produced more in the first quarter of 2006 than in the fourth quarter of 2005!  We begin to deliver lead-free product to more customers.  Our work in this area is continuing to increase, and equipment selection plays a part.  Our trip to the annual Apex show results in two equipment purchases – first another EKRA E5 screen printer, and next a soldering machine to support lead-free through-hole assembly.                  We stay busy throughout the year, and decide to increase our SMT capacity by adding another Europlacer Pick & Place machine, this one with a camera upgrade to enable us to handle the finest pitch of BGAs. The demand for lead-free through-hole assembly is more than we anticipate, resulting in the purchase of a second selective soldering machine in support of this service.  The second unit is installed and running in December. We end off our year with another highest ever sales!
2007
2007 realized a steady progression towards increased organizational, sales and marketing efforts.  We exhibited successfully in the March Amcon show, which has become the area’s only trade show servicing the electronics manufacturing sector.  During the year we add an Xeltek Superpro-3000U high-speed device programmer.  In addition to our existing SUPERPRO-280U, our new 3000U increases our ability to support growing customer demand to provide device programming on prototype and production builds. Also put into service is a Malcom solder impurity checker.  This enables us to verify that the levels of lead and copper in our lead-free solder pots are within the RoHS and industry parameters.  In other words, this gives our customers the confidence that our lead-free solder is truly lead-free!   MALCOLM STA-2 2007 also marked a significant First – our first ever 15-year employee longevity award!  This dedicated and skilled employee earned a 3-day weekend in Las Vegas for two! Key employees are promoted and take increased responsibilities, helping strengthen the companies organizational structure, helping result in another year with highest ever sales and production!
2008
2008 becomes a year of organization and strengthening our core assets - our employees. We also carry out some shop improvements. There are no major equipment purchases, but we tackle an area we've wanted to for a few years new: software. We had been using 3 or more different software packages to handle accounting/purchasing/production, etc. We've wanted to consolidate that into one package and decided that this was the time to tackle this project. We reviewed several packages and made a decision! Some training began in the 4th quarter, with our target being Jan 1 2009 to go live with our new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software. As usual our Halloween party is a hit, as even Sarah Palin makes an appearance!
2009
2009 begins with the go live of our new ERP software! Overall it goes as smoothly as one could hope for - it's a big learning curve. We get better at using the system as time goes by, there are so many features and things to learn that we realize the learning curve will be going on for a long time! As we move along in 2009, the economic situation becomes increasingly evident, as many of our customers feel the effects. We hold out as much as we can, but we aren't immune to the slower sales and cautious buyers. We tighten down the hatches, and launch a number of quality and efficiency programs (our new ERP system helps with that). Throughout the year improvements in these areas help us weather the downturn. However, it is not a year without equipment acquisitions. In February, we add a new lead-free wave soldering machine to complement our lead-free selective soldering machines. This increases our capacity and throughput on a number of assemblies.  Shortly after that we install a solder recovery machine to support the recycling of dross, a by-product of solder pots and thus soldering machines. With this we are able to recover a large percentage of the lead-free solder that is 'stuck' in the dross which has been removed from the solder pot. With the high cost of lead-free solder, this is a good investment! Throughout the year we increase our marketing efforts, exhibiting at two Northwest trade shows. The number of new contacts we make encourages us despite the slow economy. As the year comes to a close, we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Shop equipment and capacity evaluations are underway in anticipation of a better 2010!
2010
It’s our 20th ANNIVERSARY!!!  Wow!  So much has happened in those 20 years.  We are proud of having achieved this milestone and look forward to more!  As 2010 begins, we see the beginnings of optimism return to the economy…some sectors stronger than others.  We stay optimistic since we want to see things go better! Along with that optimism comes the desire to improve our capacity in several areas.  With that in mind, at the end of February, we install a new SMT line!  The new machines consist of two Amistar Automation M2 pick & place machines – high speed & high quality/accuracy!  We begin using them immediately to great result. In April we exhibit at the annual Amcon show, and the results confirm our observations that the economy is picking up.  One way or another, many people convey being cautiously optimistic! In May we celebrate our 20th Anniversary with a successful open house (and we even had a happy hour!).  It was a great event attended by many.  It was fun to meet up with vendors, customers and friends.  A few weeks later we had an employee party at a local venue with a great view and great food. Much more to come!