Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1484263
84 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2022 call it a bible. It's the doc- ument that enables us to realize short, medium, and long-term strate- gies. So, with the struc- ture of an AVL, you can basically understand the strategy of a company. Johnson: You manage your strategies with the AVL; what's the long- term strategy? How do you build those rela- tionships? What are your improvement plans? Martin: We do not reveal the AVL, but you can find all the top partner factories of the group in the AVL. It's very simple: We do not find these partners out of the blue. All these part- ner factories have been in the AVL for more than a decade, and in some of the cases, two decades; we always have this target to build a relationship that lasts forever. at is the target. We do not want to create something that will stop in the next year. We always try to develop long-term relationships with our partners, and we do this simply by having a relationship with the founder. From the top down, we meet everyone. You have to understand what the company is all about. When you talk to the boss, the boss says, "I had a dream," and he explains his dream for his company. When you talk to the VP or the sales director, then it's about sales. We need to feel that common energy, and it is more or less the same with our own strategy. Johnson: So you have access to a wide variety of laminates that would perform at different levels depending on what the customer's needs are for that specification. Aer all, nowadays we have to include the laminate in the perfor- mance specification. at's become a factor. Martin: Yes, exactly. Let's say that the AVL is a document that will simply match a partner factory with a customer. All customers are unique; they have specific needs. All the fac- tories are unique, but the salespeople from the factory will tell you, "I do everything. I do this. I do that." But that's impossible. Our business, our core value, is to assess the factory to know what they do best, what their core business is. We say, "You are excellent at this and we are going to offer this core business to our cus- tomer." Every customer is different and has a specific need. With our customers, they can- not go to 25 or 30 different factories with their projects. We're here in the middle, and we save them time they would have otherwise spent in Asia or elsewhere. Because we now have sources and partners all over the world. Johnson: Part of your value-add is in bringing manufacturing perspective into technical con- versations with your customers with regard to what material is a good match, what facility is a good production facility for what they're doing, getting them maximum yield? Martin: Yes, that's right. Two years ago, we cre- ated a new department called Field Applica- tion Engineering (FAE), which helps OEMs Nathan Martin