Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/712650
August 2016 • The PCB Magazine 53 Barry: Correct. Our delivery performance was suffering. Matties: What shifts did you make? I know you talked about changing management; culturally, and from a process point of view, what were they able to do to turn it around so quickly? Barry: Well, I think our new controlling share- holder and CEO, Yitzhak Nissan, is a shrewd and smart businessman. He's tough and holds people accountable. I think accountability be- came a big thing; you must perform. We've also thinned down the management team to become much more efficient. We cut out mul- tiple levels of management so that the answers come quickly, the decisions come quickly, and we're very responsive. Our market's lead time decreased somewhat. On time delivery is nearly 100% these days to the U.S. market, and tech- nology growth is going up. In the three years ended December 31, 2015, Eltek invested $6.7 million in fixed assets. We actually have a piece of equipment that's brand new in the indus- try, serial number one, from Orbotech. Being they're an Israeli company, we often get to be their beta site. We're now using direct imaging for solder mask as well as direct imaging for nomenclature so no more screening. We're plating our vias closed now. I'd say a major part of our technolo- gy these days is blind and buried. It's very com- mon for us. We don't see a lot of through-hole all any longer as the devices are getting smaller and smaller and density is just ramping up. Matties: Printing the solder mask makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised it's taken so long to really be- come something that the mainstream can adopt. Barry: It needs to be done as devices become ti- nier. We have many medical customers and I re- ally think the medical market are the ones who push the bleeding-edge of technology because impantables are getting small and getting tiny; the military is starting to pick up on that. Night vision goggles are a good example. Old night vision goggles might have been two inches by two inches, but they're now down to the size of a half inch by a half inch square, they can be put into an eyeball-sized device. With medi- cal implantables as well, there are implantables now for sleep apnea, neurostim and Parkinson's disease, and it's amazing how dense and how small and tiny they are. Without having that blind and buried vias technology, you wouldn't be able to get to the density or the reliability. The solder mask obviously has to get down that small, which is now going to start pushing the assembly people to get smaller and smaller with their dies and their chips. We see a lot of wire bond on the rigid-flexes as well now. You see wire bond actually jump- ing from the old ceramics now to chips right onto the board or chips onto the flex. It's just amazing where the technology is going. Matties: Do you also serve the manufacture of flex boards? Barry: We don't do a lot of single- and double- sided flex, and the majority of what we do is rigid-flex. Flex is a huge market. There are a lot of players in it. We don't do it because, I don't want to say it's too simple, but I could build an 18-layer or a 12-layer rigid-flex with blind and buried versus building a double-sided flex uti- lizing my capacity and my factory. It's a much higher profit product to do the higher tech stuff. We're a little bit like Einstein; we can build a 28-layer blind and buried without an issue but struggle with the simple stuff, as our mindset ELTEK LOOKING FOR STRONG GROWTH IN THE USA