Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1493443
72 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2023 You said having a good working rela- tionship with your supplier is critical. Is that more critical than capabilities? Would you choose the partnership working relationship over immediate capability? Tell me about the balancing act. Jessi Hall: ey both have to be there; however, say we have a relationship with a certain sup- plier, and they may not quite have the technology we need yet. We want them to have the opportunity to work with us to develop the technology we need in partnership with us. at is how we operate in our assembly facilities today, and that is the way that we're approaching the PCB factory as well. Selection is based on how comfortable you feel with that particular partner's technical capabilities, and what their future capabil- ities are. Regarding equipment, SEL is the expert in how to integrate equipment into a line on both sides. On the equipment side, I'm sure you've gone through a process of bringing in a lot of equipment and setting it up. What have you learned, and what are the best practices to ensure the equipment gets set up properly and becomes operational? having the right partners. Pick the right partners and things will go well for you. When it comes to the specification piece, we've collaborated with our partners to specify the equipment and features. We have a lot of new engineers, and our partners have been instrumental in teaching our team the impor- tance and details of those pro- cesses. is close collaboration is important not only for today's needs, but future needs; we want to look beyond today's technol- ogies. An example of this is additive technolo- gies. How can we set ourselves up today—how can we select the equipment with the right fea- tures—that will allow us the flexibility to move into that space in the future without having to buy our base equipment all over again? We might not have all the equipment sets today, but if we can lay that groundwork now, we can avoid having to make significant investments from scratch at a future date. SEL does its best to source things from North America, specifically the U.S. Does that com- mitment include your capital equipment? Hendrickson: North America is definitely our first choice, if available; if not, we'll look at other areas. John Hendrickson An operator running the horizontal electroless copper plating line. The desmear line at SEL.