Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1521713
26 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2024 Feature Article by David Hollingsworth Ascentron is a small EMS company started in Oregon in 2002 from the ashes of what had been a $30 million EMS company that lost 90% of its sales during the dot-com and electron- ics industry bust of 2001. We started out at $3 million a year in sales and worked to reinvent the business. We transformed it from what was a medium-to-high-volume manufacturer serving automotive, communications, and computer customers into a low-to-medium- volume manufacturer serving aviation, medi- cal, industrial, instrumentation, and military customers. We were successful in our efforts, growing over 600% in six years, reaching $20 million by 2008. In 2009, the Great Recession cut our sales in half, but we were able to weather the storm and have steadily built our sales back up to pre-recession levels. It was also in 2009 that we started using a business dash- board for our management team. e dash- board helped us monitor the business, clearly communicate our performance, and see future trends. Figure 1 shows our 2015 management dash- board. As we continually seek ways to improve Effectively Using Dashboards at Ascentron Figure 1: Our 2015 management dashboard.