SMT Towers are automated, highly flexible and expandable buffer storage unit designed for deployment near production lines.
Arc-Tronics is excited to announce these new SMT Towers to further expand our capabilites and offerings.
Step inside Arc-Tronics with our virtual tour! Check it out!
Step inside Arc-Tronics with our virtual tour! Check it out!
Sam Brusco, MPO’s associate editor, discusses electronics manufacturing services for the medical device industry with Michael Goeringer, president of ARC-tronics. They also talk about the challenges of building electronics meant for medical devices vs. for aerospace or industrial applications.
In July 2018, the United States Government set forth a requirement to pay a percentage of tariff for a large majority of inbound product manufactured or shipped directly from China into the United States. As an organization, ARC-TRONICS, Inc has taken time to understand, and develop the most efficient process to invoice any US Government mandated tariff charges back to our customer base. Upon review, and with a strong understanding of how our suppliers are passing the costs back to our organization, we have now evaluated the best way for move forward as noted below.
As always, thank you for your patience while we work together to continue to support any manufacturing needs in this difficult supply chain climate. Please feel free to reach out to your customer support contact for any additional information you may require.
Michael Goeringer – President of Arc-Tronics, goes through the services and capabilities offered by Arc-Tronics.
By Christine Knauer for Avionics News
Republished with permission from the March 2016 issue of Avionics News Magazine, a monthly publication of the Aircraft Electronics Association.
In a bustling business park not far from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Arc-Tronics produces many of the basic building blocks of modern technology – printed circuit boards, cables and harnesses, and box build assemblies. The family owned business manufactures products utilized in aircraft and avionics, medical devices and industrial equipment.
“The products we build end up going into airplanes and installed at airports for landing airplanes, helicopters and military vehicles,” said Michael Goeringer, president of Arc-Tronics and son of the company’s founder. “They go into MRI medical devices, laboratory equipment, and many other industrial applications.”
When Conrad Goeringer started the company in 1972, he built power inverters and power supplies for Tripp Lite and Trippe Manufacturing. Throughout the years,
Arc-Tronics has expanded its capabilities, serving more industries and more customers with a broader product mix. “The company was located in a small basement
building next to Cubby Bear Lounge kitty corner to Wrigley Field,” Goeringer said. “In 1976, Arc-Tronics moved to Elk Grove Village, Illinois, home to the largest
industrial park in the U.S. In 1980, we moved to our current location.”
Today, Arc-Tronics has grown to 150 employees with a second generation of Goeringers – Michael, Mark, Matthew and Marla – managing the business. The company manufactures some 2,500 different types of printed circuit boards, cables and harnesses, and box build assemblies, totaling more than 400,000 assemblies annually.
“Philips Medical is our largest customer, and we build more than 400 different PCBs used in localized MRI machines,” Goeringer explained. “The devices plug into a full-size MRI as an accessory, giving you an MRI image for your ankle, knee, wrist, et cetera, without going through the MRI machine itself. Our second-largest customer is Selex ES (an electronics company based in Italy and the U.K. that provides air, space, land and marine systems). We build printed circuit boards, cable and harnesses, and box builds for the NextGen project for the FAA.
As a contract manufacturer, Arc-Tronics doesn’t create its own proprietary products. Instead, its team of specialists provides comprehensive engineering support and service, including creating prototypes and end products, to customers’ specifications. The company handles all aspects of the production – development and
design, procurement through manufacturing, assembly and delivery – in its two facilities totaling 50,000 square feet. Customers retain ownership of all custom engineering and products, including patents, developed by the Arc-Tronics team.
In 2011, the Chicago Tribune named Arc-Tronics a top 100 place to work in the state of Illinois. The company recently received its AS9100 recertification. “With our AS9100 certification, we are growing our aerospace business,” Goeringer said. “Where our aerospace business was less than 5 percent in 2010, it is now as high as 30 percent of our business, and we continue to grow in the aerospace market.”
The biggest challenges facing the company stem from regulations and issues pertaining to restriction of hazardous substances, as well as conflict minerals such as tin, tantalum and gold mined in countries where revenues may be financing abusive and dangerous armed militias. Not all of the company’s challenges are as serious. One interesting trend keeps Arc-Tronics and its engineers busy innovating.“Things continue to get smaller,” Goeringer said. “We are placing 1005 chip components that are smaller than a speck of pepper.”
Financial solutions let Chicago-area companies realize big plans
With the need for infrastructure creation and improvement increasing around the world, business is growing for Daco Inc., a North Aurora-based manufacturer of precision machined components for the on- and off-highway automotive market, and that growth required new machinery on the floor at Daco’s facility. FirstMerit was there for the company with loans and operating leases to help Daco meet its customers’ global demands. “At FirstMerit, I feel like a real person and a real customer as opposed to some institutions where decisions about your business are made far away by people you’ve never met and to whom you have no access,” says Bruce Lindgren, president of Daco Inc. “We were with another bank when the economy slowed several years ago,” says Lindgren. “The downturn put a lot of stress on our relationship with them. It was a good time to look for a new banking relationship and FirstMerit’s people really stood out.” Working with Mark Monson, vice president of Commercial Banking, Lindgren has developed a strong relationship that has the flexibility to grow along with Daco.
“We know them, and they know us,” says Lindgren. “It’s a pretty flat organization in that I know I have accessibility to FirstMerit’s upper management.” He also points to FirstMerit’s financial strength in a market where many other banks have posted large operating losses. “As a customer, a bank’s distress becomes my distress. I know I’m dealing with a strong and successful bank with FirstMerit.”
That strength may be assisting Daco in other ways, too. Not only has the company financed its manufacturing growth through FirstMerit’s Commercial Banking expertise, it is talking with the bank’s wealth management area about employee 401(k) products.
New Business Means New Equipment
With its 40-year anniversary coming up in July 2012, Elk Grove Village-based Arc-Tronics Inc. is entering a time of exceptional growth. The company specializes in the engineering, designing and manufacturing of high-reliability, life safety custom printed circuit boards and electromechanical and cable/harness assembly products. New business prospects led the company to open a new facility in Mexico while installing new equipment in its existing Elk Grove Village facility, says Michael Goeringer, president of Arc-Tronics.
“The Federal Aviation Administration is changing over from radar detection to GPS equipment, which uses our printed circuit boards,” he says. “We added 11 new customers in 2011 and anticipate a 25 percent increase in business in 2012. All of this required $2.5 million in capital equipment purchases including state-of-the art surface mount equipment, 3D X-ray equipment and automated process inspection systems. FirstMerit was able to help us finance the equipment needed to handle product expansion and overall business growth.”
At the same time it was working on its new Mexico plant, Arc-Tronics added 60 jobs at its Elk Grove Village facility. “We are a family business,” Goeringer says. “I have two brothers and a sister heavily involved in this company. Our intent is for the new facility to complement our existing facility. Strengthening our foundation is an essential component to our expansion strategy for North America.
Arc-Tronics had been a customer of Midwest Bank and Trust, which FirstMerit acquired in 2010. Through the acquisition and integration to FirstMerit, Goeringer has developed what he calls an engaged relationship with the bank. “We build engaged relationships with our customers and we feel we have that with our bank, too,” he says. Currently, Goeringer and rolling off the line in March of 2012, will start at a rate of approximately 40 units per month,” he says. “This should increase to as many as 130 units each month and we need to have the materials on hand to meet that demand.”
Arc-Tronics, Inc. was honored by the Chicago Tribune as a Top Workplace in Illinois. We were recognized based on employee surveys measuring qualities including company leadership, communication, career opportunities, working environment, managerial skills, pay and benefits.