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18 SMT Magazine • December 2016 ics platforms or software in a standard and in- telligent way, ready to serve up the information at will. Finally, in the age of social media and mobil- ity, more organizations are looking for self-help opportunities. They want to be able to order on- line, get statistics online, get testimonials, and references online, and do overall research, way before a personal interaction is initiated. OEMs that are ahead of the curve with digital trans- formation are looking for partners to define and be an active part of this digital-thread strategy. A digital thread means having a lot of informa- tion about their products, parts used, defect in- formation, trace information, and manufac- turing parameters and outcomes (yield, costs) available through an electronically secure an- alytics service, with the information modeled and available for consumption by the OEM. Feedback to design, in an automated fashion, further tightens the relationship and the drives to becoming a strategic partner. Most OEMs don't have manufacturing, but they are respon- sible for their products, and this ease of accessi- bility would be an additional key differentiator for a contract manufacturer. A good understanding of capabilities, types of organizations you want to attract, differen- tiators, and strong online presence needs to be purposefully designed and available. Both Hardware and Software Solution Providers Need to Be Smart Knowing all the above, hardware and soft- ware solution providers are looking to enable capabilities and solve these challenges for their customer, the contract manufacturer. One of the main strategies used currently is to ensure products and software are "Smart" en- abled, addressing the desire for manufacturers to invest in hardware or software that is future- proof. Hardware suppliers know this will be re- quired at some point, depending on where the contract manufacturer is in their journey to be- come a Smart manufacturer. However, it is al- most a requirement now to ensure all invest- ments won't be short-term. Most hardware pro- viders are scrambling to enable their products to be part of a Smart eco-system. The sales and marketing teams at hardware suppliers are po- sitioning themselves with Smart solutions, and "integrated" solutions, which is evident at tradeshows, websites, and blogs. Core function- ality is still needed, but this additional layer of requirements must be part of the portfolio. Software vendors can be more agile in their development and offerings. Sales and market- ing organizations look to not only offer solu- tions to enable Smart manufacturing execu- tion or manufacturing operation systems, but also to combine with some industrial Internet of things (IIoT) boxes that normalize machine interface data across a factory into a Smart ser- vices and analytics layer that allows contract manufacturers to enable even legacy machines to become part of the digital transformation eco-system. This needs to be done in conjunc- tion with solving the core challenges of hav- ing strong machine vendor interfaces, provid- ing good quality and trace capabilities, strong recipe generation capabilities and Smart analyt- ics, and pushing alerts and information to the key personnel when things are out of control. No sales or marketing organization at a software supplier would succeed if the base capabilities and offers are not there. "Smart" is now part of a larger discussion. The PCB assembly industry is going through interesting times with the larger involvement of a younger generation in the workforce, digi- tal transformation taking hold, and Smart man- ufacturing as active part of discussions. These changes are driving sales and marketing orga- nizations at contract manufacturers and hard- ware/software vendors to adjust to the new par- adigm and related challenges. Many of the com- mon sales and marketing best practices apply to the PCB assembly industry; however, deep manufacturing and electronics design expertise is required to truly drive customer interactions from one-off transactions into long and sustain- ing relationships. SMT Jay Gorajia is director of consulting, PCB design and manufacturing ser- vices, for the Consulting Division at Mentor Graphics Corp. SALES AND MARKETING IN A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION REALITY