Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/937683
24 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2018 designs, we were able to get them working pro- totypes with fewer turns and they were quicker to market. So, that part of the communication and education to our customers is huge. It is amazing how few designers even understand what's going on once they send an ODB++ file over to the manufacturer. Beaulieu: I think there's a need for it, without a doubt. Based on the columns I did recent- ly about customers. My friend Bob St. Pierre, who's a long- time buyer and now a con- sultant at Draper Labs, has agreed to work with me and put together some give-and- take columns on it because he was one of those people say- ing that. So, in the spirit of getting at least the high-tech custom- ers together with board shops, we're going to start conver- sations that hopefully you guys will publish and take it from there. May- be even do a traveling road show with it. Be- cause I think it's needed. Especially with the high-end guys like Lincoln Labs, and Draper, the guys who are committed to having to be in the United States, by the way. They can't go offshore with the stuff they build. So there's a desire there for us to get this solved and to get the vendor and the customer closer together. Andy Shaughnessy: What are some of the lengths you guys would go to for a customer? Beaulieu: I can talk to that on a personal ba- sis. I'm just open day and night. That's my business. I had a family Christmas party and I was on the phone with two customers for an hour upstairs in my sister's house. That's just that personal advisor, trusted advisor part of my business. I worked with this supplier for a long time, I still do. One of the things that came out of it, and I think it applies to all ven- dors of frankly, the American circuit board in- dustry, is that right now, the American circuit board industry is very nervous of their vendor base. It's not a big secret, because you can sell 80 laser drills in China, whereas you might sell only three in the U.S. So who are you going to service? One of the bases that I used with that com- pany was that you're not just selling them a solder mask, you're selling them a complete service. Because the board houses just don't have the engineering base they used to have. Our suppliers in the circuit board industry have to engineer and they have to help us. All the good suppliers do. And we're going to need even more of that as time goes on because the ven- dors are our engineers, partic- ularly in the $5−10–15 mil- lion board shops. They rely on their vendors to support them and that means doing every- thing. If you're selling solder mask you need to be their sol- der mask expert. If you're sell- ing drills, whether they be mechanical or whatever, you have to be the expert. You have to do that service for them. It goes way beyond the selling. They are in- timately involved now. All suppliers should be intimately involved with their customers. You could apply the exact same thing to peo- ple who are selling assembly equipment. It's really the ones that stay and service that do well. Not only service, but make that correla- tion, that synergy between putting this piece of equipment into the whole production line and making sure it all fits above and below where it lies in the production line. Johnson: Yeah, at Sunstone we call that Lean. We call that 5S. And we actually have been do- ing a lot of work to do exactly that. Moving that expertise from the vendors into our shop to help out and make us more expert overall has been a side effect of lean and 5S. Shaughnessy: What are some of the craziest things that people have asked you to do at Sunstone, Nolan? What are some of the hor- ror stories? Dan Beaulieu, DB Management