52 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2021
1. Take down the silos. As we have heard so
many times over the past 15 months: We
are all in this together. is has proven to
be the best policy of all. Let's all find ways
to work together—vendors, customers,
and even competitors—and find a way to
share knowledge, experience, and technol-
ogy that help us overcome the shortages
we are facing today. Who knows, by
working together during these hard times,
maybe we will all get to like one another
and start productively working together
in the future as well. Now that would
be something.
2. Work with your vendors to find alterna-
tive solutions, especially when it comes to
products like materials/laminates. If you
are a PCB fabricator, ask your laminate
supplier for alternative substitute materi-
als, ask him to talk to your customers to
convince them that the substitute products
will work as well as the products that are
already spec'd in. If you are the PCB cus-
tomer, work with your PCB vendors, their
engineers, and your engineers, to either
accept the laminate supplier's alternative
solutions or come up with a more suitable
solution of your own.
3. You should be open to trying new prod-
ucts. In times of great adversity comes
great innovation. Maybe this is the time
to try something new—a process, a type
of substrate, a chemistry solution—that
might help us get through these shortages.
Nothing should be off the table. In the end
we are all trying to meet and satisfy our
customers' needs and maybe the way to
do this is to open our minds to discovering
and trying new alternate solutions to the
problems we are facing.
4. Have grace under pressure. is is defined
as the ability to keep your head about you
while everyone else is losing theirs. Get-
ting angry and impatient with your ven-
dors never helps, especially in times like
these, when you need your vendors now
more than ever. Work side by side with
them to find a way to solve the problem
together. Fighting and arguing at this
point is counterproductive.
5. Be realistic. Assume that your vendor
partner is doing their best and give them
space to do that. Pushing and applying
pressure will only intensify the problem
rather than fix it. e best thing to do
is work together. e more understand-
ing you are about your suppliers' issues
the sooner you will, together, find a way
to solve the problem.
is is the right time to find out how solid
your partnerships with your vendors are. It is
always much easier to have a great relationship
with your vendors when everything is going
great. But it is much more challenging and dif-
ficult when times are tough. But the way you
work with your vendors in these hard times
will determine the kind of relationship you will
be forging in the future.
Remember that this too, will pass and one
day when you are at dinner with your vendor
partner you will have a glass of wine (or maybe
even a flight of wine) and reminisce about the
good old days when together you overcame
the great shortage challenges of 2021.
PCB007
Anaya Vardya is president
and CEO of American Standard
Circuits; co-author of The
Printed Circuit Designer's
Guide to… Fundamentals of
RF/Microwave PCBs
and Flex
and Rigid-Flex Fundamentals;
and author of Thermal Management: A Fabricator's
Perspective. Visit I-007eBooks.com to download
these and other free, educational titles. He also
co-authored "Fundamentals of Printed Circuit
Board Technologies."
Anaya regularly co-authors
the column, Standard of Excellence, on PCB007.
