Deswell Industries Inc's Business Segments

We are an independent manufacturer of injection-molded plastic parts and components, electronic products and subassemblies and metallic molds and accessory parts for original equipment manufacturers, or “OEMs” and contract manufacturers. We conduct all of our manufacturing activities at separate plastics, electronics and metallic operation factories located in the People’s Republic of China.

 

Plastic Injection Molding

The Company’s plastic injection molding process consists of three phases: (1) mold design and production; (2) plastic injection; and (3) finishing.

Mold design and production

The plastic injection-molding process begins when a customer provides the Company with specifications for a product or part, which specifications are often created in consultation with the Company’s technical staff. Next the Company designs and produces the mold, using great care in the design process and in the selection of materials to produce the mold in an effort to create a high quality appearance of the completed product by reducing or eliminating potential flaws such as the sinkage of materials and irregularities in the knit line of joints. The mold-making process ranges from 40 to 50 days, depending on the size and complexity of the mold. Mold making requires specialized machines and is capital intensive.

The customer generally bears the cost of producing the molds and, as is customary in the industry, the customer owns them. However, the Company maintains and stores the molds at its factory for use in production and it is Deswell’s policy generally not to make molds for customers unless the customer undertakes to store its molds at the Company’s factory and uses Deswell to manufacture the related parts. In that way, the Company seeks to use its mold-making expertise to create dependence on it for the customer’s parts requirements. Beginning in 2005, however, through its then newly created Export Tooling Department, Deswell’s began producing molds for export to customers and thus does not use those molds to manufacture related parts.

During the year ended March 31, 2017, the Company made an average of approximately 25 to 30 molds each month. The average weight of the molds produced by the Company is about 1,800 pounds costing an average of $10,000 per set. Management believes that the Company’s skills and expertise in mold-making, coupled with having its facilities and operations in China, allow the Company to produce molds at costs substantially less than molds of comparable quality made in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Plastic Injection

During the mold-making process, suitable plastic resin for the particular product is selected and purchased. See “Raw Materials, Component Parts and Suppliers,” below. The completed mold is mounted onto injection machines, which are classified according to the clamping force (the pressure per square inch required to hold a mold in place during the injection molding process). At March 31, 2017, the Company had approximately 200 injection molding machines, ranging from 30 to 1,600 tons of clamping force, with most machines in the range of from 86 to 380 tons. Each of the Company’s machines is capable of servicing a variety of applications and product configurations and the Company has machines which permit the Company to fabricate plastic parts as small as a button and as large as a 3 ft. x 2 ft. case for a copy machine.

Using separate shifts, injection molding can be conducted 24 hours a day, five to seven days per week, other than during normal down time for maintenance and changing of product molds. Molding of products requiring extra concerns for appearance, such as cases for calculators, personal organizers and telephones are conducted in an isolated and dust free section of the factory. In a continuous effort to assure quality, the Company’s quality control personnel inspect the products produced from each machine generally at hourly intervals during production. When defects are discovered, the Company’s maintenance personnel inspect the mold and the machine to determine which is responsible. If the mold is the cause of the defect, it will be immediately removed from the machine and serviced or repaired by one of a team of technicians employed to maintain molds. The mold will then be remounted on the machine and production will continue. If the machine is the source of the defect, the Company’s technicians and engineers service the machine immediately. Through this continuous vigilance to molds and machines, the Company has experienced what it believes to be a relatively low scrap rate and has been able to maintain a high level of productivity of its injection molding machines.

Finishing

After injection molding, products are finished. Finishing consists of smoothing and polishing, imprinting letters, numbers and signs through silk screening process, pad printing or epoxy ultra violet cutting, and treating the product with an anti-fog coating for a lasting and attractive appearance. Most of these functions are conducted by hand.

Electronic Products and Assemblies

In assembling printed circuit boards the Company purchases printed circuit boards, surface mounted components and chips and uses automatic insertion and pin-through-hole interconnection technologies to assemble various components onto the PCBs. Before delivery, completed PCBs are checked by in-circuit testers and outgoing quality assurance inspections are performed.

PTH is a method of assembling printed circuit boards in which component leads are inserted and soldered into plated holes in the board. While this technology is several decades old and is labor intensive, it still has a significant market, particularly for consumer product applications.

BGA is a method of mounting an integrated circuit or other component to a PCB. Rather than using pins that consume a large area of the PCB, the component is attached to the circuit board with small balls of solder at each contact. This method allows for greater component density and is used in more complex PCBs.

SMT is the automatic process of printed circuit board assembly in which components are mounted directly to the surface of the board, rather than being inserted into holes. With this process, solder is accurately stenciled in paste form on pads located on the printed circuit board and the components are then placed onto the solder paste and fused to the melting point of the paste to establish a strong solder joint between components and the printed circuit board. The SMT process allows miniaturization of PCBs, cost savings and shorter lead paths between components (which results in faster signal speed and improved reliability). Additionally, it allows components to be placed on both sides of the printed circuit board, a major factor for the purpose of miniaturization.

Manufacturing operations include PCB assembly, wiring and testing. The process is completed by assembling the PCBs into a plastic or metal housing that comprises the finished product. Quality assurance is then conducted in accordance with the customers’ requirements before the shipment.

Metal Parts Manufacturing

During the fourth quarter of 2015, the Company closed down its metallic parts business unit and sold all of its assets. The operating results of the metallic parts business unit are reported as discontinued operations for all periods presented. We have historically reported the results of the metallic parts business as a separate segment. The continuing cash flows subsequent to the unit’s closure were not significant.