Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1202019
JANUARY 2020 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 35 we had some of these equipment delays, so we made the best out of it. We took the equipment division and made it an integral part of Green- Source. Based on our initial experience with customers, there's a tremendous need for a re- al solutions provider, not just a PCB job shop. If you're an OEM, we can leverage our net- work all over the world because we have a very strong network technically. I flew 1.2 million air miles in a very short amount of time to re- search our facility. Nobody else has done this worldwide since I did it. I've been maintaining my network and staying on top of what's com- ing out. It's a real partnership with our cus- tomers, so we're only looking for partners right now. We're not the one-off job shop company, nor are we interested in customers like that; we're interested in relationships. Matties: My guess is you had customers lining up at the door, at least with a lot of interest. Stepinski: And because of that, we've been able to make some decisions on what's the best-fit customer for us. Matties: The other point that I've been talking about in the industry is, in traditional board shops, the profit has been stomped down to minimal, and you're showing that there was still profit on the table. We have to approach manufacturing differently. Stepinski: Yes, there's a tremendous amount of waste in a traditional circuit board shop that people have not addressed. It has become the standard that this is what they have to deal with, and I can't explain it, to be honest. Matties: The profit is there. Is the problem that there aren't more Alex Stepinskis out in the in- dustry driving this thing? Stepinski: The brain drain in our industry has been bad over the past 20 years. I used to know a lot of people who were top-notch in the industry, but I don't know many anymore. Most people retired. For every five people that retired, there was maybe one to replace them. That's the way it is. In general, there's also a lack of capital investment. It's not a place for young people to come in. Factories stink, and the job-shop environment is quite cutthroat. Students coming out of school find that this is not a very interesting industry for them for many of these reasons. Matties: But you changed the type of employ- ees in this factory. You've set it up to be more about computer operators than machine op- erators. Granted, you have the technicians to maintain equipment, but it's the front- end work that you have to do to get the jobs through your factory. Stepinski: Yes. The front-end portion of the process is our big focus for 2020. We have some experience doing tooling for this facility, and we're planning a lot of investments. We're adding a new office in Poland for the mechani-