POV: Ryan Thomas, Chief Operating Officer

There is an interesting break between old tech and new tech that we're seeing in designs where you're carrying your technology forward because it's easier to innovate on top of.

But the challenge becomes how those parts get supported in a market where wafers continue to shrink, parts continue to shrink, and companies are trying to maximize profitability. So we'll have new designs that come out where the parts are not readily available as much as they used to be.

The other big challenge you'll have is someone will have this new design, but still using what's called like a through-hole component, which is a whole new cost center in manufacturing. So if you're able to design a board that's just using all SMT, you have this great opportunity to automate, have zero touch points, even run through like a dark manufacturing facility.


So when a new customer comes on board, we do a process called the DFM, a design for manufacturability, where our engineers will go through our equipment, go through the bill of. material, and ultimately try to identify any opportunities to improve the design. If you spend that extra time engineering and find the right surface mount variant to that through-hole part, you can take that entire cost center out and take that whole variability out.

Generally in manufacturing, every time a human touches something, you're adding variability. That's something you don't want, especially when you're leaning more on automation and try to make things more cost competitive.