Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1309864
16 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2020 cremental improvement in cost savings. All the fundamental stuff came out of situations that you have there. Day: The stresses are different. At our factory, although you loop the information, we have the added production pressure. There's a large degree of necessity. It's a high-pressure infor- mation loop, so there are different incentives. The innovation is driven by a time-based need. Matties: One of the things you mentioned is that there's not a lot of profit left in PCB fabri- cation for quite a few, but the case we've been making—and that you're demonstrating— is that there's profit to be made by eliminat- ing waste, becoming more efficient, and add- ing the leading capability to drive a healthier P&L. What do you say to people about mak- ing the investment and changing the paradigm into that mode of investing into their facilities to achieve a profit? Stepinski: We have to be careful. Most invest- ments in the U.S. are "me too" pieces of equip- ment. Research what you want to do and what your customers want, and challenge your sup- pliers to meet those requirements. Then, qualify before you install it. Even if you have to do it in a step-by-step way because you can't do the full qualification and the solution only exists on pa- per or on a computer, figure out how to decou- ple the variables and qualify what you're going to get. Don't buy off the shelf stuff— but that's what you see. Even in the U.S. market, you don't see anything innovative. The reality is you need to have a step-by-step approach to qualify. Everything should be looked at this way. How do you get to the next level? What do you do now? What do you think you need to do? And does it cost a lot to do the R&D? It doesn't cost much in terms of the labor; it costs time and time is money. But for most people, espe- cially in the plating area, these are not invest- ments that are made very frequently. Everybody has abundant time to properly design things. Matties: In a well-organized shop, what prof- it percentage would you expect? You're talking about thin margins for PCB fabricators, but in a healthy shop, what's the comparison? How much increase could they find? Stepinski: In our original shop, we were paying twice as much as it took to build it ourselves, as a direct comparison. I don't have too many direct comparisons. In our second factory, we just build custom stuff. I didn't build it be- fore, but in our original shop, we were able to cut the price a little bit more than half by tak- ing a different approach than had been done with some new equipment on the market. This has become a very popular case study. A lot of people talked about what we did originally. It hasn't been copied yet. Day: Then, you build a desirability factor as well, so you're not only saving yourself mon- ey, but you've become more desirable. As one does it, you have to look at the first customer to the OEM. If you become desirable from an OEM perspective, that's probably even more making you a better margin. From an OEM, generally speaking, you get a better margin anyway. You have to satisfy a need that as yet is probably not satisfied. Stepinski: We see ourselves more as an OEM solutions provider than a PCB commodity fabricator. We go to the OEM and say, "What are you trying to do? What tolerances do you need? What are your objectives?" Some OEMs aren't a good fit, but some are. It de- pends on their organization as well. If they're looking forward to continuing the same way with continuous improvement, and if they have some lofty goals for product design, some type of PCB equipment for process in- novation would give them a lot of benefits in their end products. This is where we find a good niche. We talk to our customers, and then we build the prod- ucts to what they what, modify the prophecies, and put up factories. All of these things are in our bag of tricks. There's more margin associ- ated with going with the second approach, but because of the very heavy R&D, you reinvest it and can build more R&D.