3rd Quarter Business Review and Company BBQ

by Scott Bronstad | Sep 11, 2019 | Awards, Events, News

3rd Quarter Business Review and Company BBQ

BPM Sales Heroes

William White, CEO of BPM (Middle) presents Colin Harper (left) and Jon Bondurant (right) with the BPM Sales Hero Award

BPM managers met for two days of department and individual business reviews September 10 and 11, 2019. We gathered the whole sales team from around the world: Dragon Zhang joined us from China and David Whitton traveled to Houston from Europe for two weeks of intensive training and meetings. William White, the founder and CEO of BPM, conducted the high-level strategy meetings. BPM will celebrate 35 years of business next year, and we’re excited for great things from the end of the year through 2020!

BPM Sales Department awarded two “Sales Hero” Awards: Colin Harper, Director of Engineering and Product Development, for some exciting advances (to be revealed soon), and Jon Bondurant, VP of Operations, for automating follow-ups in Salesforce for Inside Sales.

The whole BPM family gathered for a BBQ lunch, cooked on-site by Corey Miles, Director of Device Support.

IPC APEX 2019 Highlights

by Scott Bronstad | Feb 6, 2019 | Events, News

2019 NPI Award Winners

APEX Day One

WhisperTeach+ White Paper

If you’re into cool gadgets, APEX 2019 was like a techie’s Christmas. BPM brought its coolest new machines and rocked it! Trade shows are a lot of work, and lots of things can go wrong (and they did), but fortunately, everything was running like a top by Tuesday morning. Here are the highlights and some more pics:

NPI Award for WhisperTeach+ (if you bring back an NPI award in your carry-on luggage, it will flag a security check)
Over 150 guests (that we know about) over 2-1/2 days
Two video interviews (with Global SMT and What’s New in Electronics). Links coming soon
Many opportunities discovered and a few rekindled
The 3910 and 4910 Automated Programming Systems demonstrated why they are the best solution for Automotive, Industrial, IoT, Medical, etc. device programming— they truly are fast and easy (and profitable!)
An 8-foot video wall provided some additional buzz
Most of our Sales Representative Organizations covering the US, Canada, and Latin America participated, including InterLatin, the Murray Percival Group, and Restronics Inc.
Quote of the week: “Your booth is amazing– so much traffic; you must have sexy machines!” from our next-door neighbor from Parker Hannifin

Photo Gallery

#IPCapexEXPO

The 3910 was a hit (again) with its small footprint and big output

InterLatin, our sales organization in Mexico, was instrumental in engaging their connections to see what makes BPM different

It was great to show off fast and easy solutions to device programming

Game controller in hand, get your game face on for the WhisperTeach Challenge

A rare moment– only a few folks in the booth

David Roy, Region Sales Manager for US/Canada, talks about the advantages of programming with BPM

We made some great connections (and some new friends) at APEX ’19

James “Jim” Holava, Global Sales Director, participated in several interviews during APEX

Behind the scenes during a video interview at APEX on day 2

Kim Sauer with What's New in Electronics talks with our Jim Holava about WhisperTeach+

Check out https://www.wnie.online

The 4910 was flying fast and causing a stir at APEX ’19

Armando Garcia, Regional Sales Manager for Latin America, discusses opportunities with his team from InterLatin

APEX ’19 was definitely not boring!

William White (center), founder and CEO of BPM meets with several of our sales organizations, such as the Murrey Percival Group

Our booth was not ideally located, but we still managed to have tremendous traffic… must be something to see

The 2019 NPI Award for Production Software (two years in a row!)

The San Diego Convention Center is next to the Gaslight District, the historic heart of San Diego, filled with shops, bars and restaurants

The view from the Convention Center overlooking Coranado Island

The Convention Center in San Diego

APEX Day One

by Scott Bronstad | Jan 30, 2019 | Events, News

APEX Day One is in the books– we had a great first day meeting with customers, soon-to-be customers, distributors and friends in the business. When the doors opened at 10am, we had a full house. Things stayed busy all through lunch. The afternoon slowed down a bit, but we had a lot to celebrate.

We received the NPI Award for new product development again this year (two years in a row). Last year, we won for WhisperTeach (auto-teach the critical z-height). This year, we received the award for WhisperTeach+

Reduces set-up times by as much as an hour (compared to competitor’s manual teach methods)
Improves yield and job performance with fully-automated teach
Blazing-fast set-ups with fully-autonomous XYZ and Theta Teach— up to 48 sockets in just a few minutes without operator intervention

Jim Holava, our Global Sales Director, gave an interview with SMT Global Magazine… stay tuned for that link.

We still have two more days of meetings and greetings. If you’re in SoCal, drop by and do the WhisperTeach Challenge– see if you can beat your fellow humans in a Z-Teach challenge. The closest to the WhisperTeach without going over (which can damage the device) has a chance to win an iPad. We’re also having a special appearance with our founder and president, William White, on Wednesday.

The WhisperTeach Challenge

Game controller in hand, get your game face on for the WhisperTeach Challenge

The BPM Team: Penny, Romo, Dave, Armando and Jim (Scott is behind the camera)

BPM is a Global SMT & Packaging Journal Sponsor again this year

Setting up for Jim’s interview

Behind the scenes

Trevor Galbraith of Global SMT Journal interviews Jim Holava

Jim talked about the advantages of programming with WhisperTeach

Hashtag BPM3910

Magnetic levitation is always cool

The 2019 NPI Award for Production Software (two years in a row!)

Lots of action on the first day

Come see us!

Happy New Year from your Team at BPM

by Scott Bronstad | Dec 20, 2018 | Events

Happy New Year from your Team at BPM

Office Closed Tuesday, January 1, 2019

This Holiday Season, the whole team at BPM wishes you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Prosperous New Year!

The Awards

The Department that stood out and will have the Bragging rights for 2018 will be Device Support !!!! I just don’t know where to start. It reminds me of a winter wonderland!

Award for the “Jolliest with a splash of the Dark side” goes to Inside Sales – Love that your mascot is wearing Hayley’s Dress and is lit up.

Award for the “Most Creative” goes to the APS, Sites, and Software.team. The Christmas tree and lights will hold a special memory for us all.

Award for “Nice try but maybe next year” goes to Customer service – Although, when the time came, you showed your holiday cheer to Momin and made us laugh

Award for “Most Determined to have spirit despite your limitations” goes to Production. You all used your limited areas and made the departments a Fun and festive place, Way to go!!

Thank you all for participating and maybe next year we will have some other departments join in as well, not mentioning names but Accounting, Marketing and RSM’s we have faith in 2019.

BPM Lobby

Special thanks to Penny (center) and Kellie (to Penny’s right) for spearheading this years Toys for Tots (and teens) drive!

Your team in customer service

Momon was out this week… this is what happens!

Paul and the door to the inner sanctum

Penny and the Chrismas Monkey in Inside Sales

Inside Sales Cubes

Is that an elf on the shelf? I think it’s expired

Penny’s office is quite festive

Device support won the decorating contest

This was looking like a police line-up, so I asked them to look to the left

This might represent snow… I am reminded of Linus’s blanket (wrong color though)

It’s looking like a white Christmas in DS

This may not look it, but this is the most expensive tree in the building (by many factors)

Christmas in the “Skunk Works” (R&D)

Happy Hannukuh!

Your production team

Is that a Christmas tree in Shipping?

Electronica 2018, the world’s largest Electronics Show

by Scott Bronstad | Nov 21, 2018 | Events, News

Electronica 2018, the world’s largest Electronics Show

Electronica 2018 is in the books. Here are the numbers:

16 Halls, each larger than a football field and 3 stories tall, filled with hundreds of booths representing thousands of companies.
4 full days, plus 2 days of set up.
In our booth (138 in Hall B5) we had 6 guys (3 from sales/marketing, 3 from engineering/support) from BPM plus another 6 from our European partner, Adaptsys.
2 Automated Programming Systems, the 3910 and the newest 4910, which was launched at Electronica.
1 Manual Programmer, the 2900L.
Months and months of preparation went into this trade show
2 Pony Kegs of fine German Bier served
Over 300 sales flyers distributed. We ran out of Manual Programmer flyers by day 2 and printed more.
Over 50 people participated in our “WhisperTeach Challenge” (more on that later).
Lots of requests for videos of the 4910. Lots of “eyeballs” from people walking by– there wasn’t anything like the 4910 in the whole show
A large number of requests for more info, as well as several great meetings with Distributors and Customers

The result: Electronica in Munich last week was by far the best trade show we have ever been to. A lot of great opportunities.

Congratulations to Richard Steinhäuser of Creative Chips in Dresden, Germany; he is our “WhisperTeach Challenge” winner, and will be receiving an Apple iPad.”I am glad that I have won, but lacking the fancy sensors I admit that I was lucky. I am looking forward to the next challenge with (BPM’s European Partner) Adaptsys,” said Mr. Steinhäuser. He did a manual z-height teach of just 2 steps above the fully-automated teach. In second place, at just 5 steps above, was Elliot Williams of Hackaday.com.

The contest was a great way to showcase just how awesome is WhisperTeach. it saved time: approximately 45 seconds vs under 8 seconds for WhisperTeach. WhisperTeach was more accurate than humans, and when setting up jobs accuracy counts (as the machine is set up, so shall it run). If the “teach” is too high, the vacuum could cause the chip to misalign and cause socket problems; teach too low and you could cause flaws or cracks in the device– not just the one taught, but the whole job!

Lots of eyeballs on the 4910, with a top DPH of over 1,700

Our European partners, Adaptsys, were great hosts; they always had snacks and sandwiches, and even had a bar with beer on tap

Many people were interested in Manual Programming

James Holava, Global Sales Director, talking about device programming solutions

Charlie Walton, BPM’s Senior Field Technician, kept the machines purring and the jokes coming

A nice view of the BPM/Adaptsys booth. It was in a great location

Lots of good traffic and conversations

Everyone wanted to know more about the 4910 (and many asked to take video)

Some of the booths were huge, including Arrow

Avnet’s booth was half a city block and 3 stories tall

Matrix Integrated had a very cool double-decker booth

16 halls, each bigger than a football field, held the largest electronics show in the world. This was BPM’s building

Fernado Guillen and James Holava enjoy some free time at the Hoffbrau Haus, one of the oldest restaurants in the world

The view from a church tower in the old city of Munich

The SMTA Long Island Trade Show

by Scott Bronstad | Oct 10, 2018 | Events

150 attendees evangelize electronics

David Roy, Regional Sales Manager for BPM Microsystems, represented BPM at the Long Island SMTA Show October 4, 2018. He met with contract electronics manufacturers and was able to introduce and spread the word about BPM Microsystems to about 100 of the 150 attendees. “Several participants took extra business cards to evangelize on behalf of BPM Microsystems as well,” said Mr. Roy. “I expect in time to get 1 to 2 new APS opportunities directly or indirectly generated from this show.”