Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1038326
82 PCB007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2018 Feature interview by Patty Goldman I-CONNECT007 While on-site at GreenSource Fabrication, Whelen Engineering's zero-discharge PCB fab- rication facility, I sat down with Account Man- ager Jim Brown. He explained the intricacies of the many processes that this ground-break- ing company has fine-tuned, including compa- ny culture, account management, and chemi- cal processes. Patty Goldman: Jim, what are you involved in here? Jim Brown: My official title is account manager. I'm the only salesperson here. I live on the oth- er side of the state, about an hour and 45-min- ute commute, so I often work remotely. Goldman: As an account manager, your busi- ness isn't so much here as elsewhere, servic- ing customers. Brown: Correct. My manager, Don Taylor, and Alex Stepinski and I had the discussion about what the sales team will look like here. At first, we had considered following the conventional wisdom and building out a regional organiza- tion, with territories and accounts. As we start- ed to get feedback from customers and looked at the operation that we have, we saw ourselves as being digital because we're so process- driven and our yields are going to be very con- sistent. We're either going to have 98% yield or close to zero. So as far as customers go, where do you spend the majority of your time with custom- ers? It's typically fighting fires and doing "dam- age control." With our processes and equip- ment, there's a high confidence that we're go- ing to minimize escapes. We have all the auto- mation equipment, so handling damage is going to be minimal. We have a lot of in-situ mea- surements: line width; holes; copper thickness- es. We're doing virtual cross-sections with the Impex proX3 machine. And with the Schmoll drills, we can map copper layers as we drill. The Impex will give us a visual representa- tion of a cross-section. The Schmoll drills will show us the cross-section electrically. As we drill into a panel, we can identify the location How GreenSource is Fine-Tuning the Processes, Right Down to Account Management