Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1419905
46 PCB007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 Matties: For some of those companies, they're just going to wind up closing their doors, I would think. How can you survive if you don't have that infrastructure and security in place? Bigelow: at's very true. I think it will force some smaller companies to decide to milk it and retire rather than try to keep going. We have some things we outsource; I think everybody in the industry outsources a process which they rarely need to do that's not worth putting in. In one case, it's literally a machine shop run by a dad and his son. ey've made it clear that they're not going to do ITAR because it's too difficult for them. ey just don't care. Unfor- tunately, the stuff we had been sending to them was ITAR, so we had to find a new supplier. We've got that kind of disruption going on. A lot of the companies that the military subcon- tracts to are going to say, "I don't want to do that to become ITAR, CMMC, etc., compliant because you're too small a portion of my busi- ness to go through all of this." I agree with that. But I also happen to think that a lot of the cybersecurity things which have come through on the DoD end of it, and including even IPC-7091, will be adopted by a lot of companies which are not military-cen- tric. Anyone who's got intellectual property, in the medical world, or if you're in anything which is patent rich, I think they will need to have that kind of security system in place. ey will have to belly up to the bar or have their suppliers do it to become certified or to com- ply. e bright side is that it may be required by more than just DoD-centric companies. Matties: Now, shiing gears to paying for the CapEx. e cost of money is pretty cheap right now. Do you find this is a good time for finding capital and investing? Bigelow: ere's plenty of money available with leasing companies, banks, and so on. I'm a conservative guy. I don't want to leverage too hard because when there's a downturn, it can be devastating, so we're conservative on that. We try to spend a sizable portion of cash vs. borrowing and so on, but the money's avail- able, for sure. I think that it bodes well for people spending capital. ere are many who received PPP loans and they did not need to use the money for COVID purposes; that extra money can be used to reinvest. My neighbor is a restaurant equipment distributor. He said 2020 was a horrible year because everything was shut down. is year has boomed because everyone got the PPP money and they're redo- ing their restaurants to beef up their takeout, upgrade, and so on. I have to believe other industries have had some of that opportunity to use PPP funds to spend on capital equipment as well. But there are indications interest rates will be going up. Between shortages, which are going to the- oretically tick up the inflation level, and fed- eral policy and government spending policies, In March of this year, IMI installed a UCE (Universal) Alkaline Etching Machine to offer their customers world-class etching and line/trace tolerances.