Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1537054
JULY 2025 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 7 N O L A N 'S N OT ES a sleepy population of 32,000 to a bustling hub of 120,000 and the home of Intel's largest campus. The moral there is that risking change just may have a big payoff. This month in SMT007 Magazine, we look at how you've found your sweet spot in the marketplace. The taffy shop knew its niche, but do you know yours? Turns out there's a process to follow in iden- tifying, refining, and pursuing your sweet spot: • Audit your strengths: Look hard in the mirror and assess your competencies with brutal honesty. • Understand market trends and gaps: Align your competencies with the high-growth sec- tors in the electronics industry. Go where the work is. • Listen to the customer: Find out what your existing customers value most about your services. Find their pain points. Don't be afraid to dig; sometimes the real pain point is buried under other concerns. • Define your niche specifically: Take that information and laser focus on your sweet spot. The taffy shop kept its niche sharp and unflinching. You need to do the same. • Build sticky value-added services: This seems counter to defining your niche, but it isn't. Value-adds, which are adjacent to and complement your core niche, can create cus- tomer loyalty when they bring more of their manufacturing process to you. • Test, refine, repeat: Test your newly defined sweet spot. Validate it with one new cus- tomer or a handful of projects. Make adjust- ments and if it works, scale it up. In this issue, we showcase interviews with EMS companies that have had considerable success with finding their sweet spot and developing a healthy, growing business. In these interviews, we dig into how each company achieved the key parts of the process I've outlined. What they told us was quite insightful. Spoiler alert: Some take the taffy shop approach, and some strike out on a risky change. Also in this issue, our columnists tackle a vari- ety of topics. Jennie Hwang shares the first part of her experiences at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Tom Yang's ongoing discussion of glo- balization looks at the value of digital inclusion in some of the world's more remote locations. Nash Bell's column discusses the confluence of end-of- life components and solderability, and Mike Kon- rad previews a cleaning and coating conference. Finally, Josh Casper dives into smart automation and Industry 4.0, a part of our shop floor infrastruc- ture still very much evolving. Taking a double-dip in the magazine this month, Nash Bell dispatches an article considering some of the toughest rework challenges related to BGAs. There was so much to cover on this topic, not all of it would fit in just one issue. So, look for bonus content to appear this month in the SMT007 Week newsletter. If you're not a subscriber to the I-Con- nect007 newsletters that speak to your interests, you should be; subscribe here. One of the reasons I love my job is hearing—and telling—your stories; they're a perk of the job just like that taffy stop was one of the perks of being a kid working on a fishing boat. If something inter- esting is happening in your part of the industry, reach out. Good stories, like saltwater taffy, are best when shared. SMT007 Nolan Johnson is managing editor of SMT007 Magazine. Nolan brings 30 years of career experience focused almost entirely on electronics design and manufacturing. To contact Johnson, click here.