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34 SMT Magazine • July 2015 by Richard Ayes i-connecT007 In an interview with SMT Magazine, SMTC's Seth Choi, vice president of global supply chain management and procurement, discusses how the supply chain has evolved over the past few years; the role of a supply chain manager in an EMS company; how SMTC is lowering their pro- curement costs; and what strategies they've set up in place to ensure the integrity and security of their manufacturing value chain. EMS provider SMTC Corp. has been in op- eration since 1985. The company is based in Canada, with additional operations in San Jose, California; El Paso, Texas; Mexico; and China, in Dongguan, Suzhou and Hong Kong. SMTC is a truly global enterprise, and as such, one with complex supply chain issues and challenges. Beating the Supply Chain Challenge: Interview with SMTC Corp. Choi himself is responsible for strategic sourc- ing, pricing, assurance of quality, speed-to-mar- ket, and the continuity of supply in order to support global SMTC procurement strategies. Richard Ayes: what are your top supply chain challenges? Seth Choi: I would have to characterize managing cus- tomer controlled suppliers that have one or both of the following conditions as be- ing the single greatest chal- lenge for us. Those condi- tions are, first, parts with a single source where an alternative supplier has not been designed in, and second, where these suppliers have quality issues. These two factors FeAture