ovarex has established the following set of important values that guide us in our mission.

We do whatever it takes to achieve or exceed our customers' expectations: designing products that achieve functional performance and manufacturing cost goals, meeting agreed schedules and acting in our customers' best interest at all times.

Excellence means doing things right, first time, on time, every time. Our product design goal is to design products that function properly and reliably over long periods and under all the intended conditions of use, and which are easy to maintain and upgrade. We also aim to minimize total product costs, and maximize manufacturing yields. We achieve these targets by ensuring that we properly understand and state the requirements at the outset, keeping abreast with our customers' changing requirements, adhering to strict design rules (e.g., avoiding component overstressing), leaving adequate safety margins (based on maximum and minimum device voltage, current and timing parameters, etc.), testing comprehensively, using only widely-accepted HDL and software languages, selecting components with multiple sources (as far as possible), and providing clear and complete documentation. We check our circuit designs by simulation, and perform real-life testing at every stage of a design (including critical circuit testing before the design is sent to the PCB artwork designer, where possible). We are experienced enough to know that unexplained phenomena usually worsen and proliferate, and so we never ignore anything that defies explanation just because it seems irrelevant or statistically unimportant. We place great emphasis on finding the root cause of any problem, and devising a complete, and preferably simple solution.

As for our technical writing activities, professional excellence means fully understanding the subject matter and presenting it in a way that best matches the needs of the target audience, using straightforward language and explaining technical terms and abbreviations, and organizing documents in a clear, consistent and aesthetic manner.

We fully devote ourselves to the projects in hand, and are prepared to spend long hours, when necessary, to meet agreed targets, and to try to answer customer requests to add last-minute extras, or bring a supply date forward, etc.. We are prepared to spend lengthy periods of product integration at a customer's site, and travel overseas in the line of duty.

We believe in being completely honest and straightforward with our customers, subcontractors and suppliers, and with product regulatory approval authorities and government authorities. We attach a detailed hourly log to our bills. We minimize customers' expenses and avoid conflicts of interest by refusing to accept commissions from our suppliers and subcontractors, and will gladly work with our customers' own subcontractors. We turn down projects when our hands are too full to guarantee that we can meet a customer's schedule, or when we feel that we lack the necessary expertise to do the job efficiently. We avoid the temptation to pursue unnecessary technical challenges when ready-made solutions can be found, or when simpler implementations are as good. We hide nothing from our customers, and immediately report any setback without hesitation. We do not make false claims about product volumes in order to receive favors from product assembly plants and component suppliers.

We do not believe in the tactic of creating customer dependence by witholding information and failing to provide clear documentation. On the contrary: we pride ourselves on providing proper verbal and written technical explanations of our designs, complete, clear and up-to-date documentation, and thoroughly commented HDL and software code. We have proved that that one of the best ways of creating fruitful and long-lasting relationships with our customers is by generating complete trust through sharing our knowledge.

Our edge lies not only in the expertise acquired over many years of intense engineering work, but also in the wide spectrum of projects in which we have participated. It is this diversity that allows us to see the whole picture and avoid design pitfalls that might cause undesirable circuit interactions. We have worked on a huge variety of projects that require skill in VHDL development, analog and mixed-signal circuit design, low-power circuitry, linear and switching power supply design, attention to EMC and safety requirements, telephone circuit design and regulatory testing and approval, human interface design, communications protocol design, writing requirements and test specifications, and writing product documentation.

Naturally, we don't do everything on our own. We attach great importance to good teamwork and project management, and work in a coordinated and effective manner with our customers, subcontractors and suppliers. We initiate design and planning reviews with our customer's engineers, and participate intensively in the integration process at the customer's site.

We keep our customers' proprietary information strictly confidential and absolutely never discuss one client's business with another.

We consider self-criticism to be an important way of continuously improving our skills, and we often pause to learn the lessons of a project - what we have done well and should be repeated, and what we might have done better or more efficiently. Self-criticism is also a matter of looking for problems in one's own areas of responsibility before looking elsewhere.

Miriam Drori, Novarex technical communication expert and company co-owner, manages the Web site of the Israel chapter of the Society for Technical Communication on a voluntary basis.

Novarex contributes a portion of its income to those who are less fortunate: we make a monthly donation towards the special educational needs of children who are undergoing cancer treatment, and regularly contribute to organizations such as those who help disadvantaged children and the blind.