Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1491409
12 SMT007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2023 i s s i g n i f i c a n t ; t h e building is one-fih the cost, power is 30–35% cheaper, and as you go down the list, you'll find that almost every- thing is cheaper on the overhead side. e labor is a lit- tle bit cheaper, but because of the way that Carson City will be structured, we'll have most of the expensive overhead here in San Jose. Carson City will be more of a production facility that relies heav- ily on automation as well as reduced overhead to achieve a very attractive cost model for our customers. I'm shocked at how many people are interested in moving business from the Bay Area to Carson City . Johnson: You're talking about having more complex work coming into your facility. Is that something that you are actively pursuing with sales and marketing? Kottke: I actually don't have a marketing team or a sales team. Currently, we get about one new customer request a week, and we're prob- ably only taking on one or two a month. If we wanted, we could get 10 new customers a month, but we want to be careful about where we're putting our resources for customers. A lot of prospective customers want engineer- ing support alongside program management support; some customers have a difficult time paying for all that extra work. We have great resources that enable us to take on those high- maintenance customers, the kind of people who don't have good systems or tools and need that kind of hand-holding—those are great cus- tomers, provided they have the budget to pay for those additional services. Johnson: Am I correct in presuming that part of your ability to move into these higher com- plexities is because of the business operations soware that you've developed at Rocket EMS over the years? Kottke: Yeah, we are continuing to make signif- icant investments in automation and systems. e Voyager soware team has tripled in size over the last two years and the resulting capabil- ities and data collection power probably close 90% of the customers when we have a customer come through for a tour. If they get the Voyager demo, it's a "close the deal" kind of scenario. Every three months or so there are major revi- sion changes to it, and at least once a month we have a list of updates and improvements. e Voyager soware has gotten so good. Now that we have the engineering guys, production, and the quality group working closely with the Voyager team, we're generating very specific reports and tools. at move has improved effi- ciency by a crazy amount; it's mind boggling. Johnson: Add that to the other efficiencies in operation in Carson City , Nevada, and your operations really start to change. Kottke: In 2023, we will be investing in systems and automation capital equipment. If every- thing goes correctly, that building will have two to three times the capacity of Santa Clara and probably 50–60% of the personnel. at changes my cost model; it changes what busi- ness I go aer; it changes everything. Johnson: You're pointing out that Carson City is a critical investment for you. Kottke: It is by far. For the last couple of years, everyone has accused me of working on the Carson City facility just so I can grow the Voy- ager team. ere's a little bit of truth in that, but as manufacturing gets bigger and better, we can add more to the programming side of the Voyager team. e cool thing about Rocket is that we love science projects, so we're working with mul- Michael Kottke