IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1545855
28 I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2026 Ray Cottrell: I'm the executive vice presi- dent of business development at FCT and inTFlex, our flex and EMS divisions, respectively. Since Troy Koopman started the busi- ness 26 years ago, our core focus has been on value-added flex de- sign combined with world-class Asian manufacturing. Ray, this month, we are talking about diversification. A couple of years ago, FCT was looking to build up its assembly operations and grow inTFlex. How did Troy come to those decisions? It is appropriate to first provide some historical con- text. FCT has seen a lot of change over the course of almost three decades in business, and the cus- tomer has always been at the center of our strate- gic decisions. Our customer base is diverse, with EMS and OEMs. We will continue to provide only flex solutions to our EMS partners, unless they request FPCAs. But early on, we had major medical and consumer partners needing advanced flexible circuits and value-added manufacturing services. We needed to invest in new facilities and services to support them, which led to the expansion of our flexible circuit capabilities, including assembly and full turnkey manufacturing. Over the past two years, we have seen new disruptions arising from market needs, geopolitical risks, and tariff uncertainty. FCT has been adapting to that while planning initiatives to better position us to support our clients now and in the future. We continually ask ourselves, "How can we bring addi- tional value to our clients around our core engi- neering strength?" To that end, we have increased our printed electronics division, expanded our flex offering to include catheters, and offer a low-cost manufacturing strategy with world-class facilities in China and Thailand. We have also added injection molding with ster- ilization for medical products and expanded our EMS offerings in China and Thailand that comple- ment our strong engineering presence in the U.S. Our design for excellence (DFX) approach provides incremental value for our clients throughout a product's life cycle. Can you talk more about DFX? With the acceleration of technology, we need more collaboration built into the whole process. There's co-de- sign, new CAD tools, etc. What's your value-add on the design side? Ideally, we engage with clients as early as possible on their innovative flex and manufacturing needs. If we can impact their complex flex designs on the front end, for ex- ample, a medical client with catheters (long circuit with tight trace and space), we can help bring their products to market faster. It really helps to work hand in hand with an OEM's design and R&D teams when they are developing a new design. We have some wickedly talented flex engineers who have spent 35 years doing nothing but flex design work, and their expertise is widely sought. Two examples are Mark Finstad and Chris Clark, whom many of your readers may know. They sit on several IPC committees to support, guide, and help write the standards for flexible circuit design and manufacturing. That level of expertise with our expanded global manufacturing teams allows us to design for improvement as product moves through the R&D cycle, and into design for test and design for manufacturability. That is how we partner with the OEMs in all the markets we serve: medical, industrial, robotics, wearables, and consumer. How has this informed your development in the manufacturing part of the ecosystem? Of course, our design involvement often consid- ers forward-looking production pricing, lead times, and options for manufacturing. We have invested in new advanced electronics manufacturing capa- bilities at our flagship inTFlex facility in China. This was a natural evolution by offering high-quality EMS in-house, including FPCAs, PCBAs, plastics, and sub-assemblies through full box builds. In 2026, we added Thailand to support our value-added EMS offerings and further diversify our footprint in re- sponse to client needs. Ray Cottrell