Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1091269
24 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2019 in previous years. Is that part of a bigger cycle? Looking at some of Walt Custer's data, could ar- gue it might be. Does it have to do with Brexit? You could argue that too, but I don't know. We're well-prepared if the U.K. crash- es out. The big impact is going to be on logistics because every- thing from Europe that comes through seaports into the U.K. now clears in 45 seconds to two minutes. It's all automated cus- toms clearance and very fast. With Brexit, the risk is that all of the traffic has to go through normal customs clearance— goods have to be inspected— and those times go from a few minutes to hours or even days. None of our materials currently clear fast anyway as they come from outside Europe, but we could be in a much longer queue post-Brexit. So, we've increased the storage capacity in the U.K. within our facility, we put some more high bay racking, rearranged the factory to create more space, and put a bit more material in the sup- ply chain. The U.K. business unit is also be- coming an accredited Authorized Economic Operator (AEO), so we're regularly pre-audited by the customs authorities, which means our containers should clear customs quicker, as they know we have well-controlled and trans- parent import procedures. It's a bit of an investment, but we're doing everything we can to make sure that the logis- tical side of the business is as slick as possible, regardless of what happens with Brexit. We're not sitting on our hands doing nothing, say- ing, "What can we do? We don't know what's going to happen." We're doing everything we can sensibly do. My Brexit pitch to our cus- tomers is that I can't make any 100% guaran- tees, but I'm a good bet. We've thought about these things, we'll have material available, and I'm not intending to be the person that drops the ball because of a hard Brexit. I'm a supply chain guy. I have a lot of very clever friends in Suzhou who are very techni- cal, but my job is supply chains. We have re- ally thought about this and developed a good strategy to keep our customer base in the U.K. supplied. And our customer base in the U.K. is military and aerospace, which is a very im- portant market sector; we're not going to take risks with it. Matties: You're also making a lot of invest- ments throughout the factory. How do you pri- oritize your investments? Goodwin: Technology and market. I'll talk more about the overseas business units because that's really where I influence the investment. Again, Brexit has been a big driver. We talked about inventory supply chain management in the U.K., but we have two service centers in Europe—one in Germany and one in the U.K. The two factories support one other to some degree, and we've been able to share inven- Laminate visual inspection.