Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1309864
NOVEMBER 2020 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 19 Matties: We know that there's an appetite for this model out there. Johnson: One of the things I hear in this con- versation is your decision to rule your own. You even go so far as to buy equipment compa- nies to put together solutions. But behind that was some discussion about needing to custom- ize your equipment or do things that are spe- cific inside your particular fabrication facility. Is it fair to say that we need to return to hav- ing more mechanical customization expertise for our processes in a fabricator? You go back to the early days of watching this industry, and people were rolling their own equipment on the fab floor as they went. Do we need to re- turn to that? Day: Everybody copies everybody nowadays. You have 2,000 factories making square box- es with all the same items in them, and they're not bespoke anymore. As Alex says, people buy to save costs. Most companies have a modular format where you can choose a 0.5-meter line, a one-meter line, or a 1.5-meter line—horizon- tally—but it's the same. Then, you have to do your best with the equipment supply, where- as we look at it as in-house for us, but we can come up with a better solution. That means a better solution for the next people because you know the variations you've had. We recently went to a customer, for exam- ple, who's not interested in all the HMI or the touchscreens; they just want on/off. I'm pretty sure if you go to most of the equipment suppli- ers now, they can't do that because they can't understand it. They're not flexible enough. Matties: What advice do you give to the in- dustry regarding plating these days, if we start looking at the realities of where people are and where they need to go? Stepinski: You have to do your homework and make sure that you understand the science of what you're doing. Don't put in the line, take it out at the end, and then adjust it. Look at it step by step, see how it's working, and ad- just it as you go. Then, if you have limitations in your equipment or chemistry, identify them doing such a process, and challenge your sup- pliers to help you make something better. Day: And bespoke customers, like in the U.S. or Europe, they can't expect the Asian models to apply, so they can really question their sup- pliers. The dominant suppliers are still main- ly interested in Asia because that's where the money is, and then Asian customers will put pressure on them to produce one-step solu- tions that are part of the work done in the U.S. and Europe. You have to make your supplier aware that their one-step solution won't work for you. Stepinski: The market is focused on Asia so much that it lost its ability to do R&D. When you look at how long it takes to start up a new product on an Asian plating line, it doesn't take an hour. Engineers and suppliers sit there for a long time, dialing things in by trial and error. Having the system with feedback and model- ing, this is our focus. To do high-mix, low-vol- ume, that's what you have to do. Then, you can also achieve higher capabilities with such an approach. But you have to have the market to do it. Matties: One of the things that we hear a lot about is that, on the PCB side, there's not a lot of movement on the smart factory, whereas I'm thinking the digital application in what you are doing is critical to your success to do the types of controls you're talking about. Where do you see the smart factory and the PCB bare board fabricator? Stepinski: There's no such thing. You see some more approach with automation, but then there have been factories in Europe that are more automated than anything in the U.S. now for over 20 years. You see a lot of people copying these old European concepts of auto- mation in Asia. What has changed? You see some more ADVs and connection to MES sys- tems, but you don't really see self-learning sys- tems. If anybody has a feedback loop, it's very simplistic. But self-learning systems are really