Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1111672
MAY 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 51 Johnson: So, box build is a customer need that's a pretty good fit for you? Garcia: Yes. We're getting more and more inqui- ries about that capability. Customers don't want to do that in their own facilities. And that quickly turns into a discussion about moving to functional test capability and relocating cus- tomer functional test gear to our facility. Ulti- mately, we want to be a full turnkey solution provider, putting finished system assembled products that are tested into boxes and ship- ping them directly to distribution centers or directly to their customers. Johnson: Can you share any trends as to why your customers are trying not to do box build themselves? Garcia: I think it's a couple of things. First, we're a company that continues to talk to and embrace the startup community, and more and more of those players are not so old-school; they're not as enamored with having torque wrenches and stuff in their facility. They'd rather have engineering talent, hardware and software development people, and marketing personnel, and outsource everything else. For those companies, as they start to mature and are ready for their system assembly to be com- plete, they're very much at ease with compa- nies like ours taking over that part of the busi- ness. Second, I'm seeing that customers in some of the more established industries, such as the medical device indus- try, that have been slow to out- source some of their system assembly builds just due to the critical nature of the end-job function show interest in our services. Johnson: Right, especially if they're life-critical products. Garcia: Correct. And just for clarity, we're not currently doing anything that's life-criti- cal. We are supporting the production and pro- totype development of non-life critical medi- cal devices and have observed that those types of medical device customers are more open to outsourcing subassemblies that go into their final product. It makes it easier for them to focus on just putting the final unit together. Johnson: What makes for a well-prepared cus- tomer? I have to assume that in your work with startups, they do want to outsource the build, but they might not necessarily know what information to deliver. So, I'm sure there's some tutoring going on for you. Garcia: That's a timely question. We recently asked a similar question to our program man- agement team. We have 11 program managers at the forefront of receiving quote requests and documentation packages from our customers. So, we asked, "What are the things that are most important in allowing us to react quickly to a quote request or a build request?" And their top three answers were clear communi- cation, a clean dataset, and timely responses. First, clear communication of the request starts at the quote or request for quotation (RFQ) stage. It saves us a lot of time if the cus- tomer communicates clearly what their expec- tations are around the build quantity or quote quantity requested, how quickly they want something done, and the turn time both on the The flying probe tester in action at Green Circuits' facility.