Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1111672
30 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2019 form where they have a fantastic solution that worked most of the time, but in a mission- critical environment, most of the time is not good enough. We acquired that product build and did a lot of engineering on the front end with heat dissipation techniques in their oper- ating environment. After several hours in the battlefield, the devices and boards ran pretty hot, and the system began to shut down, and there were all kinds of anomalies. Even though we're not a bare board PCB manufacturer, our VP of technology has extensive bare PCB back- ground, as do I, as does our VP of operations. Within six months, we had the program back up and running successfully. And good news travels fast so that particular HUD was on a larger platform for a larger military OEM, and they caught wind of the solutions that we pro- vided, and that led to more problems to solve (laughs). No good deed goes unpunished, so it led to additional opportunities throughout the supply chain on that particular platform. Johnson: In this industry, we're in the business of solving problems. Vaughan: Right, and that's a big part of our strategy, swimming in the blue part of the ocean and not in the red, bloody part where everybody's racing to the bottom and com- peting on price. There's a low bar of entry if you're only ISO certified. A lot of companies can play over there, and the pricing and mar- gins are going to reflect that. We tend to focus on the blue ocean where we swim around and pick out where we want to engage and then apply our expert resources to solve problems for programs of significance. Johnson: Zentech has a number of dynamics in play regarding customer requirements and potential business areas. There is a lot of activ- ity with new and specialized materials, and you already mentioned the bare board as argu- ably the most important part of your BOM. From your perspective, are customer needs and requirements changing? Vaughan: We see demand accelerating across every customer that we've cultivated over the past 10 years. We went on a mission, as I alluded to earlier, to become highly certified for highly regulated markets, and there were cer- tainly some budget challenges, such as seques- tration, associated with the customer set that we developed over the years. And believe me, I heard a lot about that at board meetings. But the budget turned our direction a couple of years ago. By the same token, the delivery timelines for our customers are also compressed right now. Everybody wants to get their gear to whatever threat environment their prod- uct functions in as quickly as possible, and the DoD wants that as well. There's a lot of unrest in the world, as I'm sure everybody knows, and peace doesn't look like it's going to break out anytime soon any- where. So, there's lots of accel- erated demand, and at the same time, the build windows are compressed. Even worse, the quote cycles are very shortened. Customers used to be fairly understanding if you get a quality quote put together for a complex electron- ics product, that it takes at least