Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1216587
14 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2020 Barry Matties: Are you meeting resistance to the change, or is it just challenges in skillset? Reuven: It's both. Johnson: It sounds like customer reluctance. Reuven: Yes. Matties: If they have agreed to do this, why aren't they fully embracing this? Reuven: At the end of the day, people are peo- ple. We just had a meeting with one global cus- tomer that went with the entire solution for all the factories and said, "We have 12 facto- ries, and out of 12, eight of them were doing everything by the book, but they had some issues." The management told them that they have to implement the tool. That's nice, but what about the other four factories? Then, the customer said, "They're not running into any issues. They deliver on time, and everything is just fine." I asked, "They're not adopting the tool?" They replied, "No. Can you help me?" For the last six years, I managed two startup companies. Being a startup was always a chal- lenge because it was not a big company and I had to show customers that I had a huge dif- ferentiation from what they were doing right the executives and operators, bottom-up, are all fully convinced already that you need to go dig- ital. You have to digitalize everything that you do. We have stats from various market studies, and many of the executive staff are fully con- vinced to the point that they already started doing something about digitalization. However, we also have statistics saying that 44% of the executives are still in the mindset that it's not improving the profit. They are sold on the tech- nology and the fact that they need to do it, or maybe it's coming from a customer requirement. Customers—especially from automotive, for example—say they need to have full traceabil- ity. Everything has to be digital and fully docu- mented, and they want to have it in the cloud for the next 15 years, so manufacturers do it because they must. But how do we convince them to move into that era because it improves their business capability, agility, and ability to deliver faster? How do we convince them that it can improve the profit? For example, even if we managed to close some kind of a deal that they will digitalize the shop floor and they try to implement this, we still have to struggle to support the customer through the process of training the people to use the system to maximum advantage. It's not as easy as we would assume, even if the cus- tomer decides to buy it and go for it. This system extends through the entire electronics value chain, including PCB, mechanical and box build processes.