Tempo Automation (San Francisco) is boasting how its PCB manufacturing automation and transparent work with customers helped it land work with GE Healthcare Life Sciences’ microscopy imaging business.

“Good customer service, lead time is good, and cost is reasonable for the quality that you get,” Jason Metzner, the lead electrical engineer at the microscopy imaging business, said in a Tempo case study. (Tempo is exhibiting this week at Booth 320 at MD&M East in New York.)

Tempo touts itself as one of the fastest growing low-volume electronics manufacturers in the world, using software-driven automation to deliver complex designs.

The company employs a “white box model” when it comes to working with customers. Here’s how Tempo describes the white box approach:

“A major thrust for Tempo is transforming the classical black box approach to PCB manufacturing into an open, transparent partnership or white box model. With the black box approach, PCB design and PCB manufacturing are typically isolated stages of PCB development that require considerable time to make corrections to the design files before the board layout specifications are synchronized with the equipment capabilities and processes of the CM. The white box model essentially brings the factory to the designer such that the initial design specifications are within acceptable tolerances for the CM’s equipment.”

Metzner said he had experienced the former approach too often in the past, with “time wasted on boards for back and forth questions” that should have been avoidable.