Who Are We
We asked ourselves, from our direct experience, what issues do we have with the current service lab models, and what would we want from an ideal service lab? We concluded technical expertise, innovation, integrity, and value are the foundational attributes the ideal lab would be built on, and we created the ultimate solution, Watson Analytical LLC.
Technical Expertise
We’ve identified technical expertise as the keystone to drive innovation, value, and integrity. A strong multi-disciplined engineer has the drive and knowledge to develop innovative solutions enabling customers to resolve issues otherwise thought improbable. The breadth of this engineer’s experience has given them the foresight to avoid issues before they arise optimizing the efficiency by which they conduct their work. This engineer demonstrates a thoughtful, detailed, rational temperament that permits them to accept knowledge from others in any background to feed their insatiable appetite for knowledge.
Our staff cover a diverse background of engineering disciplines and experience ranging from: design engineering, design validation, system design, FPGA design, embedded software development, design debug, test automation, failure analysis, materials analysis, and process engineering, to name a few. Watson Analytical has the expertise to work with you and your team on all levels.
Innovation
The typical service lab staff are deficient of knowledge in the disciplines of device physics, circuit design, design validation, and test engineering, collectively. Our experience with these labs proved to us that having laboratory staff who possess a knowledge and experience in these engineering disciplines would have the ability communicate more effectively. Furthermore, the laboratory staff could utilize this collective knowledge to leverage the device physics of the failure mode with the capabilities of an analytical technique to maximize success by the most efficient means or achieve success in the “unattainable”. Our team at Watson Analytical is comprised of multi-disciplined engineers with experience in failure analysis, design debug, circuit analysis, circuit design, design validation, reliability testing, device physics, process engineering, and materials analysis.
Value
We define value as: the quality of product received verse the cost of the product. Over the past 25 years, the value of the product we received from service labs has trended in a negative direction; the quality of data has degraded while the cost of services has increased 300%; we were paying more and getting less. The quality of the data can understandably be attributed to limited knowledge of the staff. What changed over the past 25 years causing the service lab costs to increase 300% or more? In all the labs we visited, you’ve been to them or can name them, we estimated 20% of the facilities were being utilized, while 80% of the facilities lay dormant, a gross inefficiency.
The cost of the building lease, utilities, and upkeep were all unnecessarily passed on to us, the customer. It’s reasonable to think there are more inefficiencies “baked” into the cost of these lab services. With our experience with Lean Manufacturing, we optimized our processes and operations for peak efficiency to ensure you the customer are not paying for mismanagement of resources. As an example, we maintain 80-90% utilization of our floor space to keep operating costs at a minimum. At Watson Analytical you get more for less.
Integrity
Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, and in our opinion the foundation to establishing and growing a trusting relationship with our customers. When we were customers of service labs, we needed more transparency, integrity, and honesty to resolve issues and optimize performance, but frequently, we encountered defensiveness and a shortcoming of accountability on events we agreed were issues. At other times, we were quoted one price for a project, then invoiced much more at the completion of the project, or prices varied greatly month-to-month for the same level of service.
Watson Analytical practices extreme ownership. If a project does not go as expected, we have failed to do our jobs to the fullest extent possible, and we will own, learn, and grow from this failure. There is no value to our customer if we deflect ownership of failures; the sooner we own a mistake, the sooner we are able to contain, resolve, and implement corrective actions to mitigate a recurrence. Furthermore, once our customer has scoped out a project and we’ve provided a quote, our customer will pay only the amount quote and not more, and the cost of services does not vary month-to-month. Watson Analytical is the trusted lab partner you have been looking for.
See our contact page for pricing.
The Benefits
Competitive Pricing
Many companies set pricing by considering the cost of the tool and scarcity of the service provided; this frequently results in a high barrier to entry to these services. Watson Analytical believes the services we provide should be reasonably accessible to all organizations. Therefore, we consider all our expenses and offer our services at the lowest rates we can while maintaining business operations.
High Tech Tools
Watson Analytical is goal oriented, and as such, we define the attributes and limits of an analytical technique as it applies to the technologies we analyze. We then acquire the appropriate system to meet the needs of our customers. Your paying for the tool and service you need, not the “Ferrari System” we desire.
Customer Support
At Watson Analytical, we don’t want to be just a provider of services to your organization. We ultimately want you to view us as a partner with a common and vested interest in your business. We are here to support your organization in all aspects of product development, custom hardware design, custom report formatting, representing you in customer and supplier quality issues, there are no limits to the level of support we will provide your organization.
Documentation & Archiving
Watson Analytical recognizes that each company has a unique personality and some of that comes through in the formatting of documentation. We can publish data in our standard report format, in a customer provided report format, or work with you to develop a custom report format. Watson Analytical provides custom database services which allows our customers to query performance metrics and data-mine product development activities to drive lessons learned and improvements in your design processes.
