Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/582861
86 The PCB Magazine • October 2015 Matties: Tiger, an EMS company in Shanghai, achieved it. Unbelievable, but it's all through inte- gration, exactly what you're talking about. Cullen: Just like you said, we're approaching it from the other end of the supply chain. They're doing it from top-down, where they're taking control of integrating their providers. We're doing it from the bottom-up. We're trying to make sure that we're providing a value to our customers that's really transparent—they don't have to take on the extra employees, they don't have to invest in extra expertise. We give it to them through our regional service staff, paid for through chemical sales, as long-term partners. We can communicate with the OEMs and the EMS companies to make sure that we're really saying the same thing throughout the supply chain. That's always brought the most quality to the end customer. Matties: Because you're now at the table with your fabricator while they're sitting there with their customers, the OEMs. Kenney: We do have a global OEM team, which Don was talking about, and we also have an electronics OEM piece on a smaller scale here in my North American team. We have a global po- sition but also a North American position with OEMs. You can imagine, globally speaking, our OEM manager calls on the big guys at Intel, Ap- ple and Samsung, but those aren't the folks that buy most of the circuit boards in North America, so we have a North American focused OEM. We are regularly going with our customer base to some of these smaller, more regional OEMs. Our goal really is to educate these OEMs on how to specify a chemical product a couple steps away from them down the supply chain. We talk about ENIG versus ENEPIG, we talk about finishes, or we talk about what a spec should be for a dimple on a via. We're really trying to educate, because it helps our fabrica- tor. Most times, our fabricator comes to us and says, "We cannot convince this OEM to write a specification that makes sense," and we go as back-up for them. We sit with the board manufacturer, and we explain to them exactly the difference between silver and ENEPIG, or the dimple sizes, etc., whatever the case might be. We do an educa- tion process. A lot of times what ends up com- ing out of that is we now become the OEM's go-to expert: "Hey, we're thinking about a new design. We're not really sure what to put on this, can you guys come in and talk to us?" We foresee this going forward as a really big part of how we manage our electronics group. We want to be all the way upstream as far as we can, to that design phase. Like in the old days when they used to think about final finish, they'd call Don and say, "Tell me about this sterling silver," and Don would help them specify it into their customers' spec. We're going to be the same way, so no matter who the OEM is, whether it's Samsung or Hua- wei that we handle globally, or whether it's John Deere and some of these other regional OEMs, we're going to have the same value proposition: Be part of the design phase, be part of the edu- cation process, and be the supplier they call. Matties: It's a smart strategy. It's the only strat- egy that you can really be successful with these CyCLE TIME REDUCTION FOR DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CUSTOMERS FeATure inTervieW