Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1415897
OCTOBER 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 19 bridge that gap in bringing the product or the capital expenditure in-house until the longer- term market need is clearer. Matties: Now, part of CapEx is also the so- ware infrastructure, IT infrastructure, and data analysis. How are you integrating those com- ponents of CapEx into your strategy? Halvorson: Budgeting IT has become a top pri- ority in our businesses. Data storage is another top priority, and data accessibility is a priori- ty. Fortunately, most of the people that are real survivors in the industry, like us, have made a commitment to IT, and that's a big part of our CapEx programs. Brett McCoy: Right. I think cybersecurity prob- ably tops that list. Vaughan: You're absolutely right. With the cy- bersecurity model certification looming and the requirement for the PCB fabricators in the defense sector to be CMMC level three, cou- pled with the NIST 800-171 and IPC-1791, which almost all of our facilities are now cer- tified to, advanced IT systems are an impera- tive. It's been a significant commitment on our side because we know that for our customer base, which is approximately 70% defense-ori- ented, those flowdowns are going to be in their contracts from the Department of Defense. We've been very proactive and positioned our- selves at the front of the line on compliancy; of course, that takes a lot of IT infrastructure as well as manpower and commitment by the or- ganization. Johnson: I'm curious about how you frame this up. It's got to be a very different approach when you're trying to measure out capital ex- penditures and integrate what you just ac- quired from the various merged companies. Halvorson: We're actually very fortunate that we have a wide range of technology through the five factories that we operate on a day-to- day basis. Our capital expenditures are not only shared throughout the facilities, there's also a bit of a trickle-down effect based on the spear- head of the technology and some of the lower tech offerings that are also within Summit. We can actually re-utilize existing CapEx, which helps open up the doors for higher technolo- gy purchases in the right factory if there's a real change in productivity of the equipment itself. I'll use drilling, for example. In those scenari- os, we'll tend to just buy all the factories a sim- ilar high-speed system vs. trying to recapital- ize or re-utilize traditional lower-speed drilling systems. McCoy: To add to what Greg is saying, we really can take advantage of the ability to ross-pollinate, if you will, our business between all the plants and to utilize different strengths of different facilities, whether it be production, prototype, or high-reliabili- ty r igid-flex . We're able to take advantage of our strengths across a multi-platform orga- nization. Vaughan: at's an important point, but you have to remember that we have five locations, and while there is some cross-capability be- tween the locations, there's also some very di- rected energy at certain markets. For example, Santa Clara is our leading-edge facility. It's in Silicon Valley, and we tend to do the extreme technologies at that location, which requires, as Greg alluded to, very advanced, leading- edge equipment sets. At Anaheim, it's more production-oriented military programs that are primarily rigid-flex in nature. Summit Or- ange is a high-density interconnect and RF fa- cility. Chicago specializes in really rapid turns; they have to be extremely agile. Toronto has a lot of production capabilities, as well as the ITAR § 126.5 exception because it's part of the Canadian Goods Program. Two years back, Greg purchased leading-edge equipment sets in the Santa Clara operation to support those