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JULY 2026 I I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE 21 Assembly Historically, fabrication and assembly often operat- ed as separate worlds, but customers increasingly view the process as interconnected. When you can coordinate fabrication, assembly, testing, and logis- tics under one roof or through a single accountable relationship, your customers gain efficiency, clearer communication, and reduced management com- plexity. You become easier to work with and harder to replace. Resilience We all understand that the PCB industry is cycli- cal. Demand rises sharply and then contracts. Cer- tain sectors surge while others weaken. Economic slowdowns impact orders rapidly, and supply chain disruptions create sudden instability. When you rely entirely on a single revenue stream, you often feel those downturns more strongly than your more di- versified colleagues. Multiple revenue streams help stabilize opera- tions during uncertain periods. Again, this is where offering engineering or consulting services provides stability. As manufacturing itself becomes automated, pure fabrication is even harder to differentiate over time. If you add automation, AI systems, and advanced packaging technologies, how will you stack up against competitors with similar access to these capabilities? The future belongs to compa- nies capable of solving broader customer problems rather than simply producing components. Domain Expertise Everyone is talking about thermal management. Consider becoming a consultant on reliability top- ics, which is valuable to customers in the aero- space, defense, automotive, medical, and industrial markets. Become the experts in signal integrity and materials science that customers seek. Visibility and Authority in the AI Era The way customers discover suppliers has changed. Engineers are using AI platforms to research manu- facturing challenges, compare technologies, ex- plore reliability concerns, and evaluate suppliers. AI is the new authority, and companies that educate effectively will increasingly become the ones that AI systems recommend most frequently. In the old days, it was enough to rely on marketing strategies such as capabilities lists, certifications, equipment investments, and promo- tional messaging. Now, education leadership is a powerful differentiator. Spend the time and effort to publish meaningful technical content, engineering guidance, troubleshooting articles, reliability insights, manufacturability discussions, and supply chain expertise in third-party entities that already have the industry's trust and attention. That visibility influences how your future customers will discover their next supplier. And the Winner Is… The opportunity for growth in the PCB industry is not disappearing. In fact, demand for electronics will likely grow for decades. But the structure of that opportunity has changed. Some business leaders resist diversification because they fear losing focus. That concern is understandable, and careless diver- sification can certainly create problems. However, strategic diversification is entirely different. The strongest companies will be those that become most useful to their customers across multiple dimensions by creating stronger rela- tionships, greater loyalty, and more sustainable profitability. The most effective diversification strategies build naturally on your company's current strengths while solving additional problems for your customers. These expansions are extensions of your core busi- ness, serving to create a "stickier" customer rela- tionship. Customers tend to remain loyal to compa- nies that consistently make their jobs easier. Ultimately, the future will not belong solely to fabri- cators but to problem solvers. This is not because fabrication is less important, but because fabrica- tion alone is no longer enough. I-CONNECT007 Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group and an I-Connect007 columnist.