Tempo Automation inks contract with Lockheed Martin

Tempo Automation, a San Francisco-based startup that specializes in rapid prototyping and low-volume production of printed circuit board assemblies, announced Monday that it has inked a contract agreement with global security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin.

It's perhaps the most high-profile contract Tempo has signed in its 6-year history.

“We’re entering a new era of growth, and the future of electronic design at Lockheed Martin is digital,” said Jeff Wilcox, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of Enterprise Transformation. “We chose to work with Tempo Automation because they have focused their technology from the beginning to embrace software automation on both the front- and back-end, intended to create a digital thread from design to delivery.”

Founded in 2013, Tempo began as a robotics builder but soon pivoted to creating the factory automation software that runs the vast majority of the production process at the company's newly-opened facility in downtown San Francisco. The company soon outgrew its old facility and opened its current 42,000-square-foot factory in August 2018.

Tempo Automation’s proprietary software connects customer engagement, price quoting, order processing, parts sourcing, factory operations, and shipment of finished PCB assemblies. The result of Tempo’s secure and automated processes is that high complexity PCBAs are quoted, built, and delivered in days instead of the traditional several weeks vendors are accustomed to in the electronics industry. Tempo’s customer base is able to reduce the timeline—from concept to prototype to product launch—and gain key insights throughout the manufacturing process, which it said results in superior technology in finished products.

“Tempo Automation believes that customers with the stature of advanced technology leaders, like Lockheed Martin, validate our technology as the fastest and most reliable PCBA prototyping partner for high complexity designs and as an enabler for rapid innovation,” said Jeff McAlvay, CEO of Tempo Automation. “Through our unbroken digital thread, between the design files of electrical engineers and all the processes on our factory floor, Lockheed Martin will benefit from having total transparency over their PCBA orders and will also gain key insights that can be applied to their development process, ultimately creating better products, faster.”

“The flight line is our center of gravity—it’s where we are delivering integrated sustainment capabilities to ensure our customers’ aircraft are mission-ready anytime and anywhere,” said Ken Merchant, vice president of Lockheed Martin’s F-22 program. “We look forward to working with Tempo Automation and their agile hardware development to further increase levels of precision, predictability, and speed, as well as to share new ideas to help drive forward the future of manufacturing.”

Evaluation Engineering readers can learn much more about Tempo Automation by checking out a company profile feature in EE's April print and digital issue, which set for delivery and online publication at the end of March.