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PCB007-Jan2020

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38 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2020 ic gold, and silver—and electrolytic that will go up to 15:1 blind aspect ratio. This is way past anybody else. We have already done some testing and demonstrated the capabilities, and we hired Rick Nichols at AWP. He has been at Atotech for 15 years, and he's working with our design department to make this machine right now. Matties: You're making a tremendous invest- ment. What do you expect the ROI time to be? Stepinski: With AWP, we've changed the com- pany a bit. We got it ISO-certified this year, and have three ISO certifications. We put in an SAP ERP system, and we're continuing to invest in what we've deemed to be the bottlenecks there and to get more capacity because there's a high amount of demand for this equipment. Matties: Is it a Stepinksi signature series? Stepinski: No (laughs). The way we look at AWP, we had two big suppliers for our project: Schmoll and Atotech. AWP was also a key sup- plier, and we had a lot of other suppliers too. Matties: But those were your primaries. Stepinski: In the course of things, we had two suppliers that totally gave up on things finan- cially in the middle of it. AWP was one. This is also in our whole Pareto of risk, and for long- term risk, we came to the conclusion that it makes sense to have our own captive equip- ment company. Matties: Because people wondered if you were crazy, trying to run an equipment company. Stepinski: Companies at productronica are of- fering one year plus lead times on things, may- be. There are a lot of financial problems out there if you're not the first two companies I mentioned. Some people do okay, but it's a hard life in the equipment business. R&D in- vestment is very low, and it's more of a job- shop type thing. What we determined was, "We may not have an equipment supplier to make a smart factory, but when we expand, what are we going to do?" This company was our hope to implement that. We bought them, improved it, and we'll continue to grow it. This company, for us internally, is going to make whatever equipment we can get. Number one, it's going to continue to lead the market in automation and smart factory development. We're going to add these new capabilities for vertical wet processing. We have some interesting new machines that aren't on the market for problems that I've known about for 20 years, and we're building solutions for those. Our plan is to develop the solutions for GreenSource first. Then, once we debug it and are satisfied, we can decide if we want to sell it, and if so, where and how we're going to sell it. Right now, we're partnering with a few clients in Europe for the equipment that we deem to be non-competitors to us, and we're also going to be having a few partners in the U.S. that are not competitors. We'll still of- fer some products even to direct competition, but not all. Matties: In the U.S., there are a few big compa- nies, but most are small. Are you scaling this down to help smaller companies? Stepinski: The machine in front of you is a buf- fer. Even our unloader after it, you'll see ex- amples of this equipment from three or four Rick Nichols, process engineering director at AWP.

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