Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1428512
70 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2021 Stepinski: e culture of the industry is driven by the history of the industry. It's a low-mar- gin industry that's been low-capital investment for 20 years in the U.S. market. You don't have the staff in place, you don't have the mentality to go and do these projects. e biggest chal- lenge is for the project manager: coordinating the right resources together, probably heavy supplier dependence, and a nice R&D team to do all this homework, get everything built the right way, and modify the existing factories. It's a hell of a project. e expertise to do all this is scattered. Matties: Do you think there's an age issue in terms of leadership or own- ership? If you start looking at the own- ership or leader- ship, they've been at this for 20 or 30 years. ey're just not ready to take on the challenge. Stepinski: at is part of the prob- lem as well. ese factories need a fresh approach. It happens more overseas because they have better demo- graphics, honestly. We have an older bias, and that doesn't help things. Also, a lot of this is fairly new. It hasn't been going on for that long. Matties: at's why I was asking if they even have the job title or the skill set on staff, or is this something that they will need to rethink, to create this new position and new hire with that specific knowledge to come in and trans- form a factory? Stepinski: ere are two ways: you can out- source it, or you can do it yourself. ere are outsourci ng c o m p a n i e s n o w available to help facilitate all this. But at the same time, I remember sitting in class one day and one of the professors had a consulting firm on the side. He lost his whole firm in one day because some- body in Switzerland hired them all for more money and they all jumped ship together. is is the challenge. It's very volatile when there's so much demand for the skills and people and this is what happens. Matties: You've already mentioned that we're working on razor-thin margins. It's really a catch-22 here. ey have to stay in business, they have to f und it , and they have to m o d i f y t h e w a y that they're think- ing, all at the same time. As you men- t i o n e d , a l o t o f headwinds. S t e p i n s k i : T h e y n e e d t o h a v e enough confidence in the investment that they're willing to finance it to get the results down the road. at's what it comes down to. e future is about measuring things in pro- cess, taking the data into a data lake, doing analytics on it to model what's going to hap- pen in the future, and make any adjustments as needed. Johnson: Alex, thank you for taking the time. Stepinski: Yes, it was nice to talk. Matties: Always a great conversation with you, Alex. We greatly appreciate it. PCB007