Universal Instruments’ receives Frost & Sullivan award

Every year, Frost & Sullivan presents this Award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in customer service leadership within the industry. Universal Instruments Corporation has shown tremendous responsiveness to customer needs and has continually focused on long- and short-term customer profitability goals. The company has also exhibited flexibility in tailoring its product offerings to suit customer businesses. “In the evolving world of electronic assembly, Universal has a refreshingly proactive and predictive approach to customer service in the surface mount technology (SMT) placement equipment market,” says Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Vikram Shanbhag. “This includes the establishment of a highly networked global service infrastructure with regional hubs to meet specific customer needs.” Universal utilizes a network of over 200 service personnel distributed across the globe to respond to customer installation, training, and servicing needs. The company has a global service headquarters at Binghamton, United States, and regional hubs in Budapest, Hungary and Shekou and Suzhou, China where highly skilled engineers facilitate the design and implementation of locally demanded services. Universal has strategically realigned its preowned equipment business to generate an alternative revenue stream. The company offers a pre-purchase machine assessment service that is very popular among buyers of used equipment, as it acts as a quality assurance approval. The current proactive model followed by Universal includes being part of customers' production planning meetings to identify process, capability or quality deficiencies. Recommendations by the company’s onsite engineers have resulted in significant line productivity improvements as testified by end users. This model is now being developed using Intelligent Device Management (IDM), which will analyze the customer’s production schedule, actively predict maintenance cycles, and recommend line efficiency measures to improve overall productivity. Universal has ably leveraged the new opportunity necessitated provided by differentiated service offerings in an otherwise equipment intensive market in a very proactive manner. Frost & Sullivan proudly presents Universal Instruments Corporation with its Customer Service Leadership Award for the year 2004.