When you work with us at Don Alan, you quickly discover that we do things differently.
Our first two decades of operations formed and shaped a culture that puts you right at the centre of what we do.
Here is our value statement:
At Don Alan we believe there is a better way. Our exploration and understanding of the world will lead us.
Collaboration and integrity are central to all our relationships
At Don Alan we know that the prosperity and wellbeing of the customer, Don Alan, our staff and suppliers, the environment and community are inextricably linked.
We deliver value to all of our customers. Our customers stay because we continue to deliver value.
About Our Customers
Don Alan enjoys excellent customer retention. Some other companies have good customer retention too. The difference for Don Alan is that our customers are not tied to us. They have the IP for the product so they can contract the manufacture as they choose. They stay with us because we continue to deliver value.
Don Alan has high levels of relationship with customers at multiple levels and are always seeking ways to improve the value we deliver. To this end, we often produce road maps and brief customers on new trends in the industry that may impact their products.
The Don Alan Difference
Most capable electronics manufacturers will have a quality system in place but at Don Alan, quality is key right throughout the whole product cycle, from development to manufacturing, to testing. This is why you should consider Don Alan before progressing with new product development or product improvements.
It is only when all the expertise required to deliver electronic assemblies is wrapped into a closed loop that the best value can be obtained. We call this loop the Cycle of Expertise, and it is based upon Don Alan’s unique business model, in which we only manufacture what we design but the design belongs to the customer.
And we are with you throughout the whole process, including the review of field returns. Instead of just looking at them from a manufacturing perspective, we use these situations as opportunities to enhance your products even further, whether that means changing components and connections or whether clearer instructions are needed for consumers.
- Product Specification
Getting the product specification right is an essential start to any round of product design.
One of the greatest things we can do for a customer is to listen carefully to their requirement, ask questions, make suggestions and use our experience to assist in the development of a detailed specification.
The product specification not only describes what the product does but all of the connections, required standards (ROHS, EMC, C-Tick, A-Tick, FCC, UL, CE, ML and safety), operating environment, mechanical arrangements, and expected life of the product.
- Design Services
Design is the process of going from a specification to production samples that are tested and compliant. We reduce the iterative nature of the process as much as possible.
In the Don Alan design process, there are three aspects to our approach that brings the product to delivery faster.
Firstly, we rarely make prototypes. We go directly to production samples.
Secondly, as your production house, we are in a strong position to negotiate prices and delivery and samples of unique components before they are designed in.
And, thirdly, our design processes run concurrently and effectively, exploiting our PCB layout specialists and efficiencies from our standard documentation and programming models.
- Manufacturing Services
The manufacturing process is the bringing together of components and processing them into a module.
Unlike other manufacturers, we don’t believe the process starts when the components arrive into their store.
Instead, we know there are lead times of 8 to 12 weeks for most components so we design products using trusted parts and components we use across many other projects.
This means our lead times are shorter and our prices are better because we are buying components in large quantities.
We manufacture in Australia and overseas, with a significant in house production capability.
- Functional Testing
After a module is made it will need to be tested and also programmed.
Quality automated functional testing is the gold standard for outgoing quality control but it is traditionally expensive and there’s always a risk of IP being leaked or stolen.
To this end, Don Alan has developed production line programmers and functional testers that allow in house or outsourced production to be controlled, monitored in real time and programming to be kept secure.
Our test system maintains a real time database of every unit tested (and whether it has been retested). It also controls the number of units that can be programmed so the manufacturer can not program extra units to sell direct to market.
INNOVATIVE DESIGN? ELECTRONICS EXPERTISE? PROBLEM-SOLVING?
Getting the product specification right is an essential start to any round of product design. So when you contact Don Alan, we will listen carefully to your requirements, ask questions, make suggestions, and use our experience to assist in the development of a detailed specification.
And you’ll be in contact with our most experienced and skilled engineers – there are no salesman in the middle. This means we’ll arrive at an optimal specification quickly, and be able to provide realistic unit cost targets.
We look forward to talking with you.