Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1440051
12 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2022 Feature Interview with Nolan Johnson I-CONNECT007 Nolan talks with Joel Scutchfield of Koh Young about trends he's seen in 2021 and what's ahead in 2022. "We see the expanded use of artificial intelligence in several areas," Joel says. "We see predictive maintenance as being something that customers are asking for, and continued refinement and reduction of the human element in the programing process, data analytics, etc. Customers are also driv- ing the trend toward more connectivity, and I don't see that going away. It's in their control. ey're going to make all of us get there." Nolan Johnson: Joel, we are talking about Fac- tory of the Future in a practical sense. But first, from your perspective at Koh Young, how was 2021? What seemed to be the market drivers? And what do you see for 2022? Joel Scutchfield: ere was a lot of uncertain- ty coming into this year. We still had COVID, and the vaccine rollout was still forthcoming. We were just coming off an election in the U.S. where there was some controversy. At Koh Young, we were cautiously optimis- tic, and it has turned out to be a record year for us in both sales and number of units sold. We couldn't be happier. Some of that was backlog from 2020, which wasn't a terrible year for us other than Q2 where everybody seemed to experience a little pain from the shutdown. But we rebounded nicely. Quarters two, three, and four of 2021 were explosive. We're looking to grow in 2022, around 12–14% for the Americas. ere is a very strong focus on EV, mil/aero, and industrial products. Certainly, anything cloud based, 5G servers, and the whole Facto- ry of the Future concept that you noted at the beginning. We see all of that remaining strong in 2022. Because of that, our outlook is posi- tive. In addition, if we can get some relief from the chip shortage, maybe toward the end of 2022, we should see some of our traditional au- tomotive activity rebound. We have a lot of new products and new ap- plications that we are addressing with our Making the Most of a Smart Factory Initiative