GMI’s strategic placement in Costa Rica is paying dividends for its customer base. One customer responded, “I want to thank the GMI team for your efforts in expediting our PCBAs for us in Costa Rica. Your efforts will allow us to build and ship several critical month-end orders. We appreciate your support and dedication.”

David Dalton says, “GMI’s objectives in offering a near-coast, low-cost geography as an alternative to our Asian model were to: 1) decrease production lead-times while maintaining low-cost region pricing; 2) guarantee consistent quality; 3) improve responsiveness and 4) simplify logistics.” Early returns substantiate all four objectives.

Nick Harris, GMI’s Vice President of Global Operations adds, “This past decade Asia was a great solution for our customer base; in recent years we have seen a need for a transition or alternative solution to alleviate some cost points for some of our customers’ projects. We expected to begin with modest complexity assemblies, but we learned within a few months the skill set and experience of the Ticos (Native Costa Ricans) surpassed our expectations.”

GMI’s Board of Directors recently approved the purchase of AOI and X-ray equipment so the transition of much more complex assemblies can occur. To date, more than 45 projects have been successfully qualified and transferred to Costa Rica’s San Jose Valley.