Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/713934
20 The PCB Design Magazine • August 2016 SPECIAL REPORT I-Connect007 is proud to introduce the I-Connect007 Good for the Industry award. This new and prestigious award is bestowed upon individuals and companies that are good for the industry. What exactly does "good for the industry" mean? At I-Connect007 we be- lieve it means helping the industry improve cycle time, lower cost, increase yields, build better prod- ucts, increase profitabil- ity, reduce waste, become overall more efficient, do things differently, and moti- vate and inspire others to do the same—all things that are good for the industry. This is what we at I-Connect007 do every day…we be- lieve in this, and we know others do, too. We want to rec- ognize those people that are good for the industry and share their stories. Our goal is to consistently bring our readers fresh new content related to those characteris- tics listed above. Throughout the past year, the I-Connect007 team has done this by conducting interviews all over the world with hundreds of people from the industry, from congressmen to electrical engineering teenage prodigies to some of the top PCB executives. These interviews have given us a unique perspective into the industry as we have met all sorts of peo - ple and listened to, and then shared their stories. We hope they're as much fun to read as they are to conduct. It was through one of these inter- views that we first caught wind of a rev- olutionary new automated PCB fabrica- tion shop in New Hampshire, being built as a captive facility—Whelen Engineering. The man behind the innovative de- sign is Alex Stepinski. Why is Alex Stepinski good for the industry? Alex Stepinski is good for the industry because of his first-of- a-kind, proof-of-con- cept creation—a fully automated PCB facto- ry with zero waste wa- ter discharge—and his