Profile I Contract Manufacturing

Onwards

Neil Tyler meets John Boston, the managing director of Custom Interconnect Limited (CIL)

and upwards

with a host of different products like capacitors, thick film hybrids, tubes and optoelectronics. “It was a four year apprenticeship. I

spent 3 months in each division while at the same time studying for my HNC at the local college. At the end I opted to work in the company’s optoelectronics division. When I joined it had just six people and when I left four years later over 600. “At its peak STC employed over

6,000 people. All gone now,” he says rather sadly. “Like so much of UK manufacturing over the last 20 years.” While his time at STC was a success

Boston was encouraged to look further afield and much to his later regret he moved to GEC. “Terrible mistake. I left a thriving - at

A

ndover is home to Custom Interconnect Limited (CIL) an electronics service provider and

through its CoolLED business a leading designer and manufacturer of LEDs. Set up over 20 years ago the company has developed and expanded into a successful and mature electronics business. Employing over ninety people it is

headed by John Boston who has been with the company since 1987 and was appointed Managing Director in 2001. A new Executive Board was recently appointed with Chris Heal taking up the position of EMS Sales Director, James Beacher as CoolLED’s Business Director while Juliet Coulson took up the position of Operations Director and Paul Kavanagh that of Financial Director. Those appointments, according to

Boston, were made in “recognition of contributions already made and in preparation for the next phase of growth at the company.” CIL has won numerous awards and

16 April 2010

has a proven track record in the production and testing of safety critical and high reliability electronics across a number of key market segments that include: defence, homeland security, instrumentation medical and communications. The company has come through the

economic recession remarkably well and that can be seen as testament to both Boston’s leadership and to the team that he’s build around him. Like so many people that I’ve

interviewed for these articles Boston, who was born in rural Devon and whose father was a prison officer, hadn’t intended to go into engineering. “It just didn‘t cross my mind,” he

says with the strong Devonshire accent he still retains. “I was brought up in the ‘bad lands’ of Devon where the idea of going to university wasn’t even considered. I started my career in engineering by chance. I joined STC down in Paignton as an apprentice and got experience across a range of engineering disciplines and worked

Components in Electronics

the time - company to join a business that while working with some of the most cutting edge technologies was too institutionalised. It wasn’t growing and it certainly wasn’t investing.” Disappointed with what he found at

GEC Boston left and joined the then newly established CIL. What made him join? “Well as a design engineer what

appealed was the people I met and worked with - they had just so much knowledge. They weren’t ‘specialists’ but they had a broad knowledge of the technologies we were working with. And when I joined I not only designed I had to go down onto the shop floor, into the clean rooms and into the testing facilities to ensure that my designs worked and could be manufactured.” What did you gain from that? “You got to appreciate how

complicated it could be to design something from scratch. You learned to work with, talk too and understand the problems the people on the shop floor could have in both understanding and

delivering on what you were trying to achieve. Engineers often speak a different language. I learned from those early years at CIL that get it right the first time, get it right once and that’s it, it’s right from them on. Design engineers can get bored. They want to move on to the next project, but it‘s vital that they remain focussed right up to when their design goes into production.” Joining just a year after the company

was set up by the original shareholders Boston progressed steadily taking on a variety of different roles. Initially a design engineer he was appointed design manager then technical manager and finally operations director before becoming the company’s managing director. As the company grew it moved from

its original premises to a new facility in Andover. “We’re in a fast paced industry and

the facilities we had just weren’t sufficient. Various directives meant that many of the products we were producing were going to change so we decided to move. We moved just in time to see the market in China open up for us.” CIL currently has over 60 live

customers but has well over 300 companies on its books. “No company accounts for more

than 16 per cent of our turnover and no project more than 6 per cent,” according to Boston. “ We’re always looking to spread the risk and that’s a key responsibility of the four full-time salesmen we employ.” Boston’s experience both at STC then

at CIL has made him a major advocate of apprenticeship schemes. “They’re just so important. At CIL we

have one full-time apprentice and as we grow I’d like to take on more. There’s a real shortage of qualified engineers out

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