Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1111672
74 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2019 We take care of it, and they're back on with their engineering team doing what they're sup- posed to do. They don't have to go through a CM and a large Tier 1 supplier; have a number issued; pack everything; and ship it to some facility in Silicon Valley, Texas, Mexico, or off- shore. It's a long process for them to get simple stuff done. So, once they recognize that value, they're able to convince their supply chain and say, "We have two processes. Let's get Whizz to do this early NPI launch for us, and then while we're in parallel, preparing a large CM, we can move over to them." Other times, they say, "Whizz is a good back-up because we may need a few hundred to 5,000 systems right away within a few weeks," and it takes more time for large CMs to ramp everything up, so it's good to have both paths in place. Even if people are set up with large CMs, if their engineers are more pro- ductive, they'll get things done much quicker. Imag- ine the cost of a large engi- neering and software team waiting for two weeks just for work to come in from a large CM. Those two weeks are very crucial in this world, especially when the time-to-market window and product life cycles are shrinking, so every day is important. We move here by the hours. Once they see the value, then they clearly can see the distinction, and they don't have that barrier, "We are only set up with this Tier 1 supplier." They bring us in for the right stage, and we support that move onto whatever CM they want to go to for the larger volume production. We don't tie them down to anything, which is what it takes for us to make them successful. Johnson: From that perspective, and you've been doing this for 20 years, do you see cus- tomer needs and requirements changing? Irfan: Yes, we're seeing the customers are more concerned about IP, taking development proj- ects off-shore in the last couple of years because there have been a lot of incidents in our indus- try. Thus, customers are more focused on pro- tecting the IP. And they also understand that the productivity from offshore teams is a lot lower than what they initially think it will be. Some customers do not understand absolute dollar savings versus relative cost; some do, but more are starting to see the value in get- ting stuff done quicker locally and protecting their IP. When you add all of the productivity factors into calculating these costs, the time-to- market advantage is huge. The other thing custom- ers sometimes overlook when they engage with off- shore suppliers. Custom- ers in the U.S. spend time at night with their family to deal with the offshore sup- pliers because the offshore supplier will only deal with you during their time, which is night time in the U.S. That is a tough situation for many engineers; they don't like it because they have to pick up conference calls after dinner with worldwide engineering teams in India, China, etc. We relieve all of that from them, so it's easier to engage and much more productive. We have tremendous experience taking these products, including certification, into volume production. A lot of design groups don't understand manu - facturing very well, what it takes to get certifica- tion done, or cost optimization. We provide those services, and since we manufacture internally, we understand that world very well. Our approach is, "What's the simplest way to design this product that is manufacturable wherever customers choose to go?" Then, we start to rule out what can- not be done and consider where we can get more exotic materials. Because any exotic material or parameter on the board will trans- Intelligent storage on the floor at Whizz Systems.