Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1544155
52 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2026 5% the platform didn't handle perfectly, specifi- cally around tariff complexity, rather than the 95% it handled better," Pilipchuk says. "The job was getting them to see the 95%, the time they'd get back, and the work they could actually do with it." The Crimp Point For Pilipchuk, what sealed it was when Cableteque added robust labor estimation, the piece that made genuinely fast, high-confidence quoting possible rather than just faster data entry. "When the labor estimation side became available, so you could get to a real quote with real labor rates and real costs, that's what changed it for me," he says. "That made it a complete revamp of the quoting process, not just a piece of it. That resonated." But the trigger was also internal. The growth ceiling had become impossible to ignore. Wallace was turning away quoting opportunities not because of capacity on the shop floor, but because the quoting team couldn't respond fast enough to pursue them. "There are quotes we don't even go after right now, because I know we can't turn them fast enough," Pilipchuk says. "There's no point getting a quote to a customer in a month when they've already bought the parts." His approach to the transition itself reflects hard-earned change management instincts. He deliberately stepped back from leading it directly, putting his quoting manager and a tech-savvy team member in charge instead. The combination of one person who deeply understands the cable assembly and one who is more comfortable with software configuration is intentional. The transi- tion will also require updating Wallace's ISO-docu- mented quoting procedures, a significant under- taking the team is working through systematically. For Pilipchuk, success will be measured in quote turnaround time, quoting volume, pricing accuracy, and ultimately on-time delivery, because getting committed lead times right at the quoting stage has downstream effects all the way to the ship- ping dock. He's already running experiments to compare supplier pricing surfaced through the new software against Wallace's existing contract pricing, curious whether the market has moved in ways their current procurement channels haven't yet captured. Harnessing the Moment Wallace's story is not unique; it is representa- tive. The same paradox lives inside their Chicago facility: world-class equipment on the floor, analog processes running the business. It exists across the industry, and the forces that are finally pushing shops to close that gap are intensifying. Customers across aerospace, medical, and industrial markets are compressing their own time- lines and expecting their suppliers to compress with them. The shop that quotes in days when a competitor quotes in hours is not just slower. It is, in many cases, invisible. "The industry is going that way," Pilipchuk says. "Our customers are going that way. AI is pushing the world at a faster pace. If you don't get on, you will definitely be left behind, much like the buggy whip manufacturer. You're either getting on, or you're not." The irony is that the same instinct driving invest- ment in shop floor automation, the recognition that one machine can do what ten people cannot, applies directly to the quoting office. "One person can cut a wire by hand and get a hundred done in an hour," Pilipchuk observes, "but there's a machine that can do thousands. We understand that argument on the floor. We're finally applying it to everything else." For Pilipchuk, the urgency is personal enough that he's now pushing his sister company to begin the same transition, with the frank assessment that they are further behind than Wallace was, and that the window for a smooth, planned adoption is narrowing. The wire harness industry has always had its own pace, culture, and vocabulary. The craftsman- ship is real, and it matters. But the tools available to support that craftsmanship have finally caught up to the complexity of the work. The shops that recognize this moment for what it is, not a threat to the skill, but an amplifier of it, are the ones that will define what custom harness manufacturing looks like in the next decade. Joanne Harris is a co-founder/ marketing expert at Tech- 2markeing with experience in the electronics industry.