DCA's Expert Services
The Design Chain Associates team and our partners have a tremendous range of skills and depth of experience in product development, supply chain management, manufacturing, logistics, and environmental stewardship that brings value daily to our clients.
Often manufacturers, NGOs, Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), industry associations, financial institutions, governments, and others come to DCA for special tasks or services that do not appear on our standard list of offerings or are not apparent from our literature. The broad nature of these special assignments and tasks make categorization difficult, however they fall into the following general areas:
Surveys and Studies |
White Papers |
Mergers & Acquisitions |
Due Diligence Studies |
Turnaround and Rapid Review |
Investigative Reports |
Intellectual Property Services |
Benchmarking |
EMC/Safety |
White PapersSoftware and other companies that wish to provide context for their products come to DCA to author “white papers” that help them explain the challenge their solutions address. We have a deep understand of electronics and other manufacturing industries, the challenges manufacturers have in understanding, evaluating, and implementing software tools and solutions, and the challenges both buyer and seller face in speaking the same language. We can help suppliers to electronics and other manufacturing industries address your audience by providing insight and knowledge of your solution space in the context of your prospects’ challenges. |
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Design Chain Associates traces our very roots to our activities supporting mergers and acquisition within Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, Hewlett Packard and others. From “clean-room” analysis techniques to hands-on investigations, DCA’s trained team can analyze the product development and manufacturing operations of any proposed merger or acquisition and deliver a succinct and non-biased report, recommendations, and tailored services. You can always count on DCA to operate in a non-intrusive but results-oriented manner insuring rapid realization of economic objectives and a no-surprises smooth transition.
Similar to Mergers and Acquisitions, venture capital firms and other interested parties utilize DCA’s knowledge and experience to investigate and report on various operational aspects of target companies prior to capital infusion. Sometimes these are post-finance troubleshooting efforts to find why performance lags in specific areas. Many times we are called upon to simply benchmark these operations against industry standards in a non-biased, objective manner.
Most turnaround services are directed at short-term financial management objectives. While these are certainly important and cash management is fundamental to survival, your company may actually need more than that. Generally there are underlying operational issues that lead to economic distress. Your solutions may require expertise in functional areas such as quality, supply chain management, manufacturing operations, inventory control, fulfillment, environmental compliance, and logistics.
DCA has a team of seasoned professionals that can rapidly assess your needs and stop the bleeding. Utilizing our unique “Rapid-Review” methodology, we can quickly and unobtrusively asses your operations at minimum cost and disruption. To do this, we quickly assess performance in these key areas:
With our rapid review methodologies, DCA gets you results in a matter of days not weeks. Call us for a discussion of your needs.
Similar to white papers, clients have come to DCA asking for a wide variety of investigative reports on specific industry trends, geographical and political issues, legislative actions and other highly specific and usually confidential topics. These reports typically are unique and highly customized, containing information not generally available in the public domain.
Intellectual Property Services
DCA has a broad background in Intellectual Property issues. DCA works with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the US Department of Commerce (DoC) on counterfeiting and trademark and patent issues.
Highly specialized in IP issues in South Asia, China and other emerging areas, DCA incorporates a broad network of seasoned Intellectual Property Attorneys both in the US and the Far East that can guide you through the Chinese and other trademark and patent laws to insure proper registrations and patents are in place. If necessary, we also have in-country investigative sources that can get to the root of your IP problems and obtain results through legal processes in China.
Product benchmarking is a valuable tactic to understand how your products stack up against your competitors'. Whether done internally or by consumer agencies or other external methods, the techniques and skills to accomplish this are well-developed.
However, how do you benchmark your internal operations and business processes to insure they also match up to "best-in-class"?
We can help. DCA’s experts come from broad backgrounds representing many years of cumulative experience. Additionally our participation in standards bodies and other industry organizations allows us a broad perspective of similar processes from dissimilar companies and industries. This provides a unique and independent platform to observe and rate various processes and models.
How well does your company or department stack up? Let DCA’s unique Rapid Review methodology give you fast and economical answers – and if desired, solutions.
When you’re entering a new market it is not enough to think about just environmental regulatory requirements. Many markets have significant enough differences in safety and electromagnetic compliance requirements (and others such as labeling) to require a complete assessment of the laws and requirements that are going to impact your product’s marketability. Many companies have come to us for this service, and DCA partners with experts in Safety and EMC to provide the broadest technical regulatory coverage available.
We, along with our trusted partners, can help you in many ways; contact DCA today and find out how.
