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Whitney Blake Company is known throughout the Wire & Cable, and Cable Assembly Industries
for the very high quality of its Products and Designs. We seldom develop new products for our own
direct sales, but instead we pride ourselves on our capability to develop new products for the many various applications required by our wide OEM Customer base. The vast majority of our products are custom designed for our Customers.

Whitney Blake’s electrical products run the range of applications from large
heavy-duty Industrial cords, through medium sized, but extremely robust Military Communications cords, to small ultra-flexible Medical and Telecommunications cords.
Our designs feature multiple, high strand-count conductors, with numerous twist configurations including twisted pairs and triplets, individual and overall shields of various construction, and a wide choice of conductor alloys and gauges, conductor construction (whether stranded or tinsel), insulation and jacket compounds, finishes and colors. We have incorporated fiber optic circuits within some designs, and we have designed non-electric Koiled Kord™’s for applications including lanyards for law enforcement and military applications, and leashes for Extreme Sport applications such as kayaking and snow boarding. Our goal is to supply our Customers with exactly what they want. To accomplish that goal, we need certain information in order to design the best possible solution to satisfy our Customer’s needs.

Product Development starts with the initial contact between Whitney Blake,
and You, our Customer.
This is usually accomplished by contacting our Sales Personnel. Our Customer Service Representatives are experienced in cord manufacturing and assembly, and can ask the right questions of our Customers to obtain the information necessary. Should additional assistance be necessary, our Customer Service Representatives will involve either or both a Direct Salesman and a Design Engineer.

In many cases, our Customers have already completed a design, including drawings and specifications. In other cases, our Customers may simply have a concept in mind, and be looking for assistance in completing the design and specifications.
It really makes little difference where our Customer may be between these two extremes, because our excellent Design Engineering Team will review every design and specification to ensure both functionality and manufacturability. Whitney Blake Company is ISO 9002 certified, and the necessary procedures are in place to make sure every detail is evaluated, and every problem addressed, on the way to initial production.

There are some minimum details that must be determined from the outset.
These include such obvious details as the application, performance specifications, number of conductors, and the physical dimensions of the cord. There are other, more subtle details that our customer may decide to specify, such as conductor size and construction. Finally, there are additional obscure details that should be left up to the Whitney Blake Design Engineering Team, such as the conductor lay length and the minimum insulation wall thickness. A good rule for Customers to follow is to specify only those details that have been determined to be critical to your design, and allow maximum flexibility for the Whitney Blake Design Engineering Team. Do not hesitate to specify any detail that you deem important, but neither should you over specify. To do so may result in an unnecessarily increased price.

Product Development continues with Whitney Blake’s Design Engineering
Team designing the cordage and finished cord from the conductors, through the finished assembly.
The vast majority of our cordage constructions are designed with the intention of making them into a Koiled Kord™. There are some straight cable assemblies as well, but the majority of them also require the same flexible construction. This is an area of expertise not shared across the board in the Wire & Cable, and Cable Assembly Industries, and Whitney Blake’s reputation within these Industries speaks for itself. Whitney Blake’s Design Engineering Team will choose the appropriate conductor (gauge, stranding, finish, etc.), the insulation (compound, wall thickness, color, etc.), twist configuration (lay length, polarity, pairs, triplets, shielding, etc), and jacket (compound, wall thickness, etc). They will also determine the physical dimensions of the finished Koiled Kord™ or straight Cable Assembly, as well as the appropriate end finish work (tinning conductors, applying contacts, assembling connectors, molding, etc.). All the procedures required to manufacture the finished product will be compiled in a quotation standard within our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Once the Quotation Standard has been completed and checked for accuracy, the Customer Sales Representative, or Direct Salesperson, will calculate the costs involved in manufacturing the product, and determine a price.
The price will be delivered in a formal Quotation to the Customer. There may be price breaks by volume, and there may be a Lot Charge for a specified number of samples for evaluation prior to the Customer placing a production order. These details are dependent upon the Customer’s requirements.

The final stages of Product Development begin when an order is placed and manufacturing is undertaken.
This may start with a small sample order to prove both the manufacturability of the design, as well as to prove the performance of the design. The Whitney Blake Design Engineering Team will convert the Quotation Standard to a Manufacturing Standard, completing all the details in procedures not required in the Quotation Standard, and manufacturing will commence.

There may be a series of performance tests that must be performed before the Customer approves a production run.
Many performance tests can be performed by Whitney Blake Company’s Quality Assurance Department. Some tests may necessarily be performed by an outside source, or by the Customer themselves.

When the Customer approves the first production runs, you might assume that Product Development has come to an end.
Such an assumption would be in error, though, because throughout the life of the Customers OEM Product, there may be changes in the design driven by any number of sources from Customer Feedback, to Engineering or Marketing concerns. Whitney Blake Company stands ready to respond to these changes on behalf of our Customers with future Product Development for the life of the product.