Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1248324
20 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2020 Matties: You have done a good job of reach- ing out and marketing to the OEMs and getting your products specified into the blueprint, but there are a lot of changes in factories. What impact has the bare board process had on your materials, or what advice do you give the fab- ricators? Tushingham: I'm pleased you acknowledge the job we've done on the OEM design side. That's a key part of our business model, and it has allowed us to be successful for many years. There is an increased level of fabricators that are more involved in more decisions now in the markets that we've been traditionally serving. We still have a way to go, but we're significant- ly upping our game in terms of the attention and the support we provide to our fabricator base. We've historically done a very good job of providing good technical support for those customers, once they've started to use our ma- terials, but we're releasing some commercial products now that allow us to tailor the total service package that we provide to our fabrica- tors because they play more and more of a role in the decision making. We're not shifting away from our OEM mod- el because that's going to be key for us. We're never going to compete on cost against an FR- 4 company because that's not who we are. We have to retain that OEM design-in as much as we can, but we are also paying closer atten- tion to how we can add value to our fabricator customers. Matties: Deliveries are always a critical factor in the supply chain and getting materials from Rogers, it's in big demand, and there have been long delivery times. I am not sure what your delivery times are now, but that left a window open for fabricators to look at replacements. I'm glad to hear you are putting more focus there because that needed some attention. Tushingham: It is true that in several instances in the past, there have been demand surges that resulted in capacity constraints, which in turn resulted in extensions of lead times to unacceptable levels. There still appears to be a perception that Rogers has extremely long lead times. One of the major reasons we start- ed down this path of multiple site qualifica- tions a few years ago was to try and address lead-time concerns. We also significantly in- creased our capacity in general, including the purchase of an Isola factory in Arizona a cou- ple of years ago. We recognized that one of the biggest knocks against us was our lead times, so we've significantly increased capac- ity in the last two years—more than doubling capacity on some of our higher volume prod- uct lines. We've done that, and if you look at our standard lead times now, they're approaching where I think our customers want us to be—in the 5–15-day-range—and, quite often, in our high-volume products, we're able to deliver more quickly than that. We're also making a concerted effort to improve our service levels. In North America and Europe, we've added distribution partners who are able to assist us in meeting the expected service levels from that segment of our customer base. Matties: You recently signed IEC as your dis- tributor. How's that working out? Tushingham: Very well. It was a phased ap- proach. We moved some of our more commer- cial products to them to start to get to know each other and make sure the model worked. As that became established and we knew it would work, we moved some of our more complex, custom-type products to them. It has worked very well. The customers in that spe- cific segment see their service levels improve; it's something that Shawn Stone [IEC presi- dent] and his team are set up to handle, and it allows us to focus on what we're good at as well. Matties: For clarification, they're handling all of North America now for certain customers. Tushingham: Correct. We still have customers who buy direct from us, but IEC covers a seg- ment of our customer base for all products across North America.