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56 The PCB Magazine • August 2016 somebody in Europe or Israel to go. This week, we're here in London at the Nadcap meeting. We support Nadcap. We're an aerospace sup- plier. We received our Nadcap accreditation a number of years ago. I actually sit as a supplier voting member on the Nadcap ETG task group. We work closely developing the specifications with many of the Tier 1 primes. Matties: Is the goal of the meeting this week to come up with some of these specifications? Barry: Yes, Nadcap is always looking at its docu- mentation and improving for its auditors and for companies like ours. As a supplier sitting in on these committee meetings, we have the opportunity to add our comments into it. It's a great forum; I think it's really important to come for the sake of meeting with your Tier 1 customers, but also you have some influence on the specifications that you're audited to. Matties: You're part of the conversation. Barry: Exactly, so it's critical. Matties: Part of being a business is being part of the conversation, because if you're not part of the conversation you're just overlooked. Barry: Correct, exactly. You have to live with what they give you. Matties: Just some final thoughts. What do you think the greatest challenge is today of being a board fabricator? Barry: Oh my. Well, price is a big thing with erosion of the U.S. market and a lot of it going offshore. Some of that's coming back, so price is a big thing. You have to be able to have a factory that's lean so that you can be price sensitive to a customer. You have to be a factory that has a global mindset and can deal with customers all around the world. Not only do we do business in the U.S., but we're in Europe, we're in India. We're starting to deal all around the world. Matties: When you say you're in those locations, do you mean with sales offices? Barry: No, not sales offices, but an actual cus- tomer base. We do a great deal of business around the world. You have to be a global sup- plier and think globally. Technology is critical, but I think even more than technology it's reli- ability. If I'm a buyer and I'm going to look at a supplier, I'm going to go to the supplier that may not necessarily be the cheapest, because cost isn't everything, but I'm going to go to the supplier who I can count on and who I can de- pend on. Where I know when I get the product, it's going to be reliable and that he does what he says he's going to do. I think those are the critical things. The PCB industry has had a bad rap for poor performance or poor quality, and then on the other hand everybody tries to buy for just low cost. I've had customers actually go away from me for a few dollars, but then they have huge fallout from possibly an offshore supplier for yield. Matties: That's not an uncommon statement. We hear people shopping for price over cost and value and they wind up just losing their ass. Barry: We've had several customers go offshore and then come back to us because they couldn't build the technology. There's also a lot going ELTEK LOOKING FOR STRONG GROWTH IN THE USA