Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1248324
MAY 2020 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 21 Matties: What concerns do you think the in- dustry should have right now? What do you find most concerning out there? Tushingham: It's the uncertainty of how quickly the economy is going to come back. The supply chain has been pretty robust from what we've experienced. We've had to do some things, like increase safety stocks of specific products, raw materials, and things like that, but the biggest question on our mind now is when will con- sumer demand and consumer confidence re- turn? And the longer that goes on, the more challenging it becomes to operate as we oper- ate today. We're spending a lot of time scenario planning and making sure that the different sce- narios, in terms of how quickly and how hard this comes back, that we can manage our op- erations to be healthy long term. We've been around 188 years. We'd like to be around for another 188, so while we need to take care of the short term, we also need to think about how Rogers can come out of this in a strong position to support our customers long term as well. Matties: Is there any concern about increasing cost, whether it's from shipping or raw mate- rial, copper, etc.? Tushingham: The shipping side has had the most uncertainty in the past few months with both cost and scheduling. For raw material, we try to have multiple sources of copper quali- fied from local sources if we can. We're work- ing to mitigate any underlying price pressure by continually looking for multiple source qualifications so we can manage that side of the business. So far, it has been manageable. I can't deny that we see a lot of competition from the people who were maybe more orient- ed to FR-4 and high-speed digital in the past who are now seeing opportunities in the high- frequency space. They have done a great job using low-Dk glass and high-performance cop- per to improve the performance of their overall solution. We have a history of resin development, so we've typically driven the performance of our solutions through resin composition. We do not rely on high-performance glass and cop- per as much. As you've seen, in the past year, there have been shortages of high-performance glass. That has not impacted us significantly, even on our highest-performance products. Similarly, with copper, while low profile cop- per does give us a boost, often, we do not need it quite as early as some other companies do. More and more, we hear that high-perfor- mance glass is supply-constrained for some others, and, fortunately, it has not been an is- sue for us. Happy Holden: I've used RF materials virtually from the first day I started in 1970 with HP's