Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1010078
AUGUST 2018 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 51 Forsythe: The answer to that is mostly no. The people who are cleaning generally fall into the camp of people who never stopped cleaning. They've been cleaning for the past 20-30 years, and they've had time to improve and optimize and adjust things to match up to their needs. By and large, people do a very solid job using a very reliable process that is robust and works quite well. One of the reasons there's a lot of education when it comes to cleaning is to help people who are doing cleaning for the first time, or in a very long time, to learn. It is kind of a standard operating stuff; while it is new and a little bit different, it is not really very different and not challenging to do a very good job, in a very efficient and low-cost way. People are starting to do cleaning every day and they are experiencing that. They are seeing the yields, and they are seeing improved reliability and an improved risk profile for their operation. So, in general, I think most customers do a pretty good job and we are in the background and here to help, for small changes. Our industry often has a lot of people that come and go, and anyone can find themselves a bit short on the technical expertise. That's when the vendors step up and help train the new guys and help them come up to speed on things. That's part of our value proposition. Las Marias: Are there still opportunities for optimizing the cleaning process? Forsythe: There always is. For instance, if you are an EMS provider, your product portfolio changes all the time. Therefore, maybe their processes are lined up and matched with what their current uses are, but they might be different than they were a year ago. There's that piece of the puzzle. People tend to, by nature and by the talent in our industry, lean things out and run them as efficiently as possible. Las Marias: In our ongoing conversations within the industry, we've learned that communication is always key in the supply chain. Please give your comments on that. Forsythe: If you're having a bad day, we're standing next to you tomorrow. And together, we will figure out how to make that go away. It's rarely something that's a quality issue with our stuff; it's usually something's changed in the operations environment. Is the equipment having a bad day? Did the product mix really change and have the needs changed? Our customers live in a dynamic world. When things do change, our engineers and tech people they're busy fellows. We're here to help them. And I think that is a big deal and think that's a key part of what we bring, and what others try to bring to the marketplace. Las Marias: What is Analyst, and what are the latest developments? Forsythe: The Analyst is a monitoring system that we introduced two years ago, and the idea was really multidimensional. The world doesn't need another gauge or another horn. What the world needs is information. So, we brought a data-services approach where we delivered data through the cloud, through the phone, computer—wherever a customer wants it; triggers are set for warning and for red zones, and a text or email, in real-time, is delivered to that address. The data collection and curating has been popular and effective. Now that data is available digitally, they can be searched and in a very few minutes, touched— even if it's a few months old—one can go back to a particular day or time and grab the data. That curation tends to be very popular.