Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1372612
MAY 2021 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 85 that will come out of their design and product group because they have their own board shop. Stepinski: GreenSource was a captive facili- ty, and then we started doing some merchant market stuff. e merchant market stuff led to a lot of R&D because we had a "build it and they will come" approach with GreenSource. We saw what the market wanted, and the big- gest thing that the market wants from us right now is SAP—semi-additive processing. e big innovation was taking the SAP processes that people have been using for really small, very dense features, and asking the question, "Why don't we do this on standard products? Why don't we do this on RF product?" Now we can improve our tolerances significantly because we don't have etch loss. We don't have trapezoidal traces; we have rectangular ones. We are applying it now to more standard prod- ucts, and we are industrializing the SAP pro- cess for standard cores and subs. We even inte- grate it with resistors, as well. Basically, you improve your Cpk across the board with SAP, and this is why SEL had some interest. Normally SEL had two- to 12-layer products, so why do they need SAP for what they're doing? Well, if you're paying atten- tion to impedance tolerance, then wouldn't it be nice if you had a really high Cpk and you never had to worry about it again? In a typi- cal PCB shop situation with print-and-etch, you're typically using the entire spec range. Here you have a much more robust process, a higher Cpk, less to worry about; they like this concept. It's a future where they have the abil- ity to do this now and then scale up a separate line for something like that, if they want to take that path. And they're definitely interested in it right now. Matties: Your transformation is from the cap- tive facility to factory builder, and now be- yond as a soware solutions provider. You own and now build equipment for the PCB indus- try specifically for your factory; you have a test bed for that factory and your soware really gives you a huge advantage, I would think. Stepinski: We have a lot of scaled economies from the integration of all these different pil- lars and initiatives that we have in the business that we've accrued. Matties: e zero waste obviously is a big con- tributing factor to the captive facilities. Not having to deal with the pollution side of it makes it a lot easier for them. Stepinski: at's the fundamental innovation of the company that sparks everybody's interest and leads us down the path for helping them with soware and the other equipment proj- ects that we do. It's always the door opener, and then we go from there. Matties: Let's talk about the company struc- ture. I know you have GreenSource, AWP, and now you have the soware. Are you bringing it all under one umbrella, or will these be sepa- rate entities? How does that work? Stepinski: As you know, I'm not the own- er of the company. I'm just the founding tal- ent. And for the startup phase, I have been the managing director of all the business entities. Currently, I'm the MD of GreenSource and AWP. We have development plans in place. We're adding key resources, doing training internally, and developing people into differ- ent roles. We're going to put a proper struc- ture in place this year; you're going to see a different version of our company with more key people and less "Alex" as the brand. is is key to making a robust organization. Aer we've done all these great innovations, now is the time to strengthen it, make the compa- ny more mature and more solid, then exit the startup phase. Matties: Let's talk more about the zero waste. at's something that I would think the indus-