Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1111672
MAY 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 77 empower them. Whatever training they need or want, we highly encourage them. We invest in tools and training our people so that they can do a world-class job. We think through every aspect. Johnson: I noticed you have quite a bit of design and engineering with FPGA design all the way up to mechanical and thermal. Were you saying you'd offer that to someone regard- less of whether they're having stuff manufac- tured? Irfan: If it's a strategic decision, we'll support them on any aspect of the design, even if they don't use manufacturing initially. But we don't take that openly for everyone because there's a risk of when they go to another manufactur- ing shop, different issues could come in that could reflect as an issue on the design, which it is not. We are more comfortable taking it on where if you're doing the design, at least build the first set of prototypes, debug, and bring it up so that it's contained. But if some custom- ers come to us and they have been in a situa- tion where they were already locked in, their kit was there, and they needed our help, we may take it on as long as we see a path to something that will open the door for us to be a more valuable supplier. If they come for manufacturing only, we have no problem with that; we take that sort of thing all the time. But when it is some small portion of design only, we do take it on, but there has to be a strategic reason for us to do that if we see a path of growing the customer. Because those are very valuable resources, and we don't want to allocate them. For exam - ple, one company came to us with an RF issue where the signals and a lot of packets were dropping. They asked if we could help debug the issue. Everything is based in Taiwan, they were going to build in Taiwan, and those were precious resources. The most we could do was 40–80 hours of billing for us to debug their most crucial issue, but there's no ROI for Whizz in that. Like any company, we would like jobs to turn into business for us. And that is why local companies may be more eager to take care of offshore companies. We take them on, and we have companies coming to us from India and China for their own IP concerns. We take it on when we can contain who's responsible for what. Johnson: And your original ODM services are pretty interesting. Irfan: On the manufacturing side, we're very sophisticated. We do boards that have 20,000 components on them with 6–8 large FPGAs. Those types of boards turn on a three-day turn. To assemble 20–25 high-quality boards for customers is a huge undertaking. We shine in that area. We have customers who call us on a Thursday afternoon, saying, "We need these on Sunday. Our engineers are going to China. They have to take these boards with them and we need them on the flight by this time." We're able to turn those types of boards. Sometimes, due to our relationships with customers, the paperwork and purchase order happen on Monday when the boards were done on Friday or over the weekend. We provide the boards that they need. We're not cheap, but when they understand the value, they're glad to pay for that premium because it's our ability to have that bandwidth and skillset available for customers when they need it. This stuff is not planned before, but all of a sudden, they need it. And if you have that open for them, by design, that's a busi- ness model we are in, which is why we are not a very low-cost business. We don't go after everybody, and we're not a good fit for every- one. We're a great fit for people who are look- ing for value, need that sophistication, and want to get the job done right; that is who we are. By design, we take the right type of cus- tomers and don't chase everything. Johnson: This is all very impressive. It's refresh- ing to hear. Thank you for your time and your candor. We appreciate it. Irfan: You're very welcome. SMT007