Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1091269
20 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2019 cause we don't distribute, sell, handle, or man- age anybody else's product. Matties: That's an advantage for you and the customer. Goodwin: I think so. Again, we have some things going on with anticounterfeiting tech- nologies. It's in its very early days, but it's a big driver for us. If implemented, we'll be able to identify our product from a marker within the product—not a mark on the product, but a marker within the product that we're already manufacturing. I'll be able to walk into a facto- ry, look at a piece of material, and tell not only whether it's a Ventec piece of material, but if it is, what lot number it has and how it traveled through our supply chain. We'll start that in the high-value specialties, and then depending on the need and the demand from customers, we can roll it out widely or not depending on whether customers see value in it and are pre- pared to pay the cost, and customers only pay that cost if they see the value. Matties: How soon will we see that? Goodwin: It's difficult to say, but we're start- ing the project in earnest and plan on making some product in 2019. I'll keep you updated on it, but it's very new. Matties: You have an R&D department here with 50–60 people in this area right now. We were talking a little bit about new products and how you come up with the strategy. Goodwin: We have some crazy meetings where it's a free-for-all, and ideas come out. They come from the feedback we get from PCB shops, technology roadmaps from OEMs, and extrapolation of those things from our own thinking. In the end, we come up with this mass of ideas. Then, we have to pare that back to something that we can actually develop at an interesting price point for the market and successfully manage through our supply chain. We want it to lead back into our factory where, as we have discussed, we are geared for making high mix, lower volumes of specialty products. We're well placed to do that from a manufacturing perspective. And because we own our own supply chains, we can take inven - tory decisions and positions globally around the world without having to have serious discus- sions with third-party distributors about who's going to meet the cost; it's all our cost. We look at the supply chain angle and marketing as part of the product development cost. There's no point in developing products and not having a budget to get them out into the market. Matties: It's absolutely part of that cost. We talked about the timing too. It takes three to five years, and a large part of that is testing. Goodwin: UL is a bugbear for us, and they charge a lot of money for what they do. We can argue about the necessity, but it is what it Thermal impedance testing.