Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1236528
102 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2020 get online and get better at using our product. And we're also giving much more virtual sup- port. So obviously we can't send our application engineers and support engineers on-site either. We're doing much more virtual support, and we're using different kinds of collabora- tion tools to try and get a common language with our customers. Because, traditionally, you would go in the shop there, and you would say, "Okay, this machine is causing the prob- lem." Now, we can't do that. But we can cre- ate some simulation of the factory and use that as we do with that. And we've been develop- ing products for the cloud. Everybody is; it's not a big secret. I think this is a big sign that we have to accelerate, right? If we had many more cloud platforms, we could easily support our customers now with installations, with upgrades, with modifications. The fact that a lot of this software is installed on-premise, on traditional servers and runs in factories, when these things happen, it's very challenging. I think this is going to cause us to invest even more in the very short future in bringing more and more tools to the cloud. Matties: What message would you like to share with the customer of the industry right now? Manor: Well, we've been talking to our custom- ers, and there's a mix. Our customers in China always seem to be ahead of the curve, they're up and running. And they're up and running at about 80–90% capacity. We've been closing deals in the last couple of days in China even, which is completely extraordinary. There, the message is, "We're with you. We'll support you remotely, and we can't come to it now, but we'll give you all the support as you ramp up production, and you start getting everything and going, and we're going to be helping you." Some of our other customers in Germany and Italy have been much more hit by this and are down to 20–30% capacity or even closed for a week or two. Our message is, "Stay safe, and Siemens as being a big company probably has the capac- ity to withstand this kind of a crisis. We'll be there for you, we'll work with you, and we'll help you." And then we have the mixed cus- tomers where production is down to let's say 50%, and they're up from 10 lines to five lines. They have fewer people in the factory and ev- erybody who can work remotely, they do bring the essential people in and then we're support- ing them. I imagine we're going to see a big decrease in the number of new product intro- ductions once this is over because none of us are going to run now and buy a new iPhone, right? Or none of us are going to go and change our smart television once this is over because we all understand that, you know, there is eco- nomic uncertainty. So consumers are going to probably stay a little bit behind and also com- panies are going to probably ramp up produc- tion of existing designs, but I don't see a lot of NPIs. But because of all of the impacts of this virus on the supply chain, we are expecting a significant shortage of components. So, that means that if I was making my de- vice using some capacitors, I might not be able to get them anymore, and the capacitors avail- able might be very similar but not identical. So I expect an increase in product revision. I expect customers are going to have to do the fine tweaking and are going to have to put a lot of effort into strategic sourcing to get enough components and have to probably mix multi- ple suppliers and vendors in order to get to the volume that they want. This means changes in engineering and bringing these revisions to pro- duction, making the tweaks and the different program, and if you want to stay with the same level of quality, that does require some effort. And we have the engineering tools; we have specific wizards that were being developed for this type of new product revision to make it very smooth and not have to create the full NPI cycle because you've just switched a couple of components and might have made a couple of changes in order to accommodate that. I also believe we're going to see our custom- ers have to go for higher mix because again, if I was going to make 10,000 of these products, but I simply can't get the components, then I'm going to have to make a batch of 2,000 or 5,000, and I'll make a batch today and a batch in 10 days when I do get the components. Even