Judy Warner (00:01) Hi David, thanks so much for joining us this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for joining. David Lane (00:06) Hi Judy, how are you? Judy Warner (00:07) It's great to see you. We had so much fun catching up with you and finding out all the crazy connections we have, but for the sake of our audience, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background and what your role is now at the assembly side of Summit Interconnect. David Lane (00:27) Certainly. I'm David Lane. I'm the vice president of operations. I lead the assembly division of Summit Interconnect. This particular business unit used to be referred to as advanced assembly and it's been in business for well over 20 years. And really its genesis was in the prototype industry, building circuit card assemblies and delivering on speed and accuracy. My background is that I've been in the electronics industry since the late 80s. both in the OEM world as well as in the electronics manufacturing services segment. Most of that time has been in the EMS side. I'm a degree mechanical engineer with a background in process engineering. I have led factories, I've led regions of factories. I've had teams that include design engineering, test development engineering, engineering resources on the process, as well as the design circuit side. And from there, I've really come to appreciate the necessity of helping the design engineering community be effective and be able to get back to work by speeding up the prototype and the ideation stages of the product development. Judy Warner (01:34) I love that and this is exactly why I wanted to have you on because you're seeing the song of most of our listeners here and they sure need help in that way of eliminating blind spots and doing things a little bit better. So with all that experience that you just outlined, I know you've been at the Assembly Division of Summit Interconnect for less than a year. So what inspired you to make that hop? David Lane (02:01) That's a great question. Thanks for asking. The real reason that I jumped into this was that I saw a need for being able to drive the ideation and the prototype stages, being able to assist engineers and focus on their development cycle. Having had engineering teams that have worked for me, even in the EMS side, we found it difficult to be able to execute on building prototypes so that they could keep their design process moving forward expediently and effectively. So I've always had a passion for being able to help with that portion of the phase. Typically in the EMS world, all of the activities are driven by either volume production or new product introduction. And that's usually driven by commodity managers, core team leaders that are interested in the product launch, but not necessarily in facilitating the required steps. to help the design engineers achieve their goals and keep their projects on task and on target and on budget. So when I saw the opportunity to participate within AA that focuses in that area, I really saw a great opportunity where I can kind of feed my passion in the area that I've spent so much of my time in the industry, as well as really hit a key valuable area. And a big part of this really does come back to enabling our country to advance and have a competitive edge on the speed at which we're delivering new products and new technologies into the market effectively. Judy Warner (03:29) I hear you talk about prototype and NPI as different animals, so to speak. So I'm really interested in that nuance that you've uncovered and become passionate about. Can you explain that with some more depth? David Lane (03:43) Absolutely. There is a vast difference between NPI and prototype. They just seem to have the common deliverable of there happens to be a set of cards to go along with them. But when you talk about NPI, the primary deliverables aren't getting that circuit pack back to the engineer to continue the development cycle. It's more along the lines of the rest of the deliverables, a supply chain, a manufacturing launch plan, a quality plan, being able to deliver on the rest of the value proposition. for being able to ramp that product volume rather than simply getting it to the point where it can be there. And that's what prototype is all about. It's all about speed and accuracy and getting good circuit packs back in the hands of the engineers so that they can continue with their design validation testing, the next iteration, adding additional capabilities. And if they're struggling with their EMS partner or any shop that's trying to provide that to them or leaving them to fend for themselves, that really slows them down from the standpoint of their development cycle and their design cycles. Judy Warner (04:44) It seems like a pretty impactful disconnect, you know, for decades, you and I, we've complained if not whined about the dangers of siloing and what you're explaining sounds like different goals for the EMS, the design engineer and the product manager. so obviously you have created a nuanced view of how these things fit together. David Lane (05:05) Absolutely. Judy Warner (05:14) So from your view sort of in your position at Advanced Summit Interconnect, what's your unique value proposition that helps you put that together in a unique way for design engineers? David Lane (05:31) Another great question. It's really about the fact that we focus on the prototypes, whereas the typical EMS prototypes are a distraction from volume production. NPI is important because it gives them the next revenue stream. But prototypes are a combination of things. They're difficult. They're engineering and resource intensive. It doesn't guarantee the follow on revenue opportunities. It's time critical, right? The sooner that you get that engineer, the circuit packs back so that they can get back to work. that drives the criticality of helping them keep on schedule. But along with that, one of the unique value propositions that Summit Interconnect provides with our prototype services is you are getting that advanced information from the standpoint of component life cycles, availability, lead times. We're doing a design for assembly evaluation before we build the product. We're also facilitating, because we're part of a fab company, Judy Warner (06:23) Mmm. David Lane (06:27) all of the efforts that go into procuring that printed wiring board to the specification of the engineer. So we really make it very easy to be successful and get those guys back to what their primary function is, which is evaluating the circuit and continuing forward with the design. You know, the key part of that is that it leaves the design engineer, if you will, on their own to be able to figure out how they're going to move forward with their design project, because it's not the core interest of the commodity manager that may be engaging with that EMS partner. or the core team lead, they're held accountable for that schedule without necessarily having the resources that they need in order to be effective at being able to deliver on their portion of the cycle during phase zero of the life cycle. Judy Warner (07:09) So you're really covering all that for them and giving them insights that are good for right now and create speed, but also are good for them for the long run. So you're preemptively giving them those insights. because it sounds like because you're both a board manufacturer and an EMS, you're preparing them for long-term success so they can go to either the next spin. David Lane (07:18) Exactly right. Exactly right. Judy Warner (07:38) or a new product, right? And keep them agile and moving. Very cool. David Lane (07:42) Right. And it's kind of a unique position because I wouldn't really consider us a classic EMS. We're very specialized and we focus primarily on those prototypes in those low to medium volume that occur in the unique segments of the marketplace, but specifically tied to the design phase for the engineering teams. Judy Warner (08:02) Well, I interviewed a couple of young, brilliant folks at Advanced Assembly when they were not part of the summit organization. And one thing I was so impressed with is that even when they're doing the quote, like how much DFM and DFA they were doing even at that point, whether or not they won the job, like, so is that still true? What does that do for you and for design engineers? David Lane (08:32) Well, it is true. We're still doing a lot of that scrub, but not only the bill of materials, trying to identify those parts that are unobtainium, the parts that have very long lead time or are very difficult to acquire in the industry. And that seems to usually be a combination of either the printed wiring board itself or that core piece of logic that's central to the design. But along with that, we're evaluating through that cycle of... whether we're seeing other challenges from the standpoint of the assembly technology, the construction at the PWB level, what may be driving costs. And then ahead of building the first of the assemblies, we're actually doing that deep dive DFA where we're verifying that the footprints and the components match. So we're helping out that design engineer with making sure that they have good accuracy within their component selection and the footprints that they have in their device library and their design software. And that helps before we've actually built the printed wiring board so that they're not ending up either having to re-spin the board before they can build the prototypes or having a bunch of rework that's involved on the assembly in order to just get it back in that cycle. So typically that can reduce a couple of iterations within the prototype and the product development cycle, not having to spin for footprints because we're checking that at the same time as our... Other teams in the fab side are doing the DFM for the printed wiring board. So we're able to actually jump in and stop that production of the PWB if we're running into issues that are footprint mismatches or issues at the bill of materials level and communicate that back to the design team so that we can get resolution before it moves forward. Saves a lot of money, saves additional time on spins. And again, it's all about accuracy and getting a quality product back in the hands of the engineers so that they can continue forward. Judy Warner (10:22) Because I've lived in the same world that you've lived in historically, David, I want to ask some devil's advocate questions. So when you guys run into say a footprint issue, but you're only communicating with maybe a commodity manager and you're like, we need to talk to the engineer. Like, does this slow design engineers? down? Do you get any pushback if you're dealing with a commodity manager versus working with design? Like, tell me about that messy place that it could get stuck. David Lane (11:00) Well, they have different functions and they have different objectives, right? The commodity manager is about not getting in the way of the cycle, but they won't understand the significance of not being able to build that product or having a mismatch or having a bill of materials that can't be fulfilled because it doesn't have the right information. They're typically driven by price and then not being the cause of a slip in the schedule. rather than truly understanding what the impact is to the engineering team on the design cycle and the fact that that could result in a full spin. Being able to deal directly with the engineers and we've got a matched team between our sales team and our client services that are literally in multiple times a day communication with the customer to make sure that they understand where we are on the cycle. Slips happen, it's a normal part of things. You end up with a board going on hold because there's an issue from the standpoint of the stack up. There's questions from the standpoint of clearances or dielectric or differential pairs. All of those things can slow things down, but the fact that we're coordinating both of those pieces of communication and we're able to see what that timeframe is and what that date is, first of all, we're keeping the customer, that design engineer informed of what the status is so they know what to expect. They can plan their cycle and their activity accordingly, but we're also facilitating beating up that communication cycle based on the fact that we're working directly with the board shop and the design engineer to be able to resolve the problems quickly and getting that commodity manager or that buyer out of the middle invariably speeds things up and drives better accuracy and a better deliverable. Judy Warner (12:30) Mm. Yeah, I think that's a key takeaway. Jerry Partita and I've known each other for decades and he's my go-to guy. If I want to know anything about what slows down Fab or you know, he knows where all the bodies are buried. so I think that's, you know, without sounding like we're just doing a sales pitch for Summit here, that's sort of why I wanted you guys to come on. David Lane (12:56) That's for sure. Judy Warner (13:08) as sponsors to bring all that intelligence to our audience. I think anyways, I'm impressed again, just cause you and I both have all the scars to prove for, you know, the school of hard knocks, you know? And so I like that we can hopefully fast track and fill some of those holes together. Just as an aside, are you guys leveraging any new software or David Lane (13:18) We have a lot of scars, Judy Warner (13:37) AI or LLMs, like, are you using any tools to help make that part of the process easier in that I noticed that young engineers would prefer, if they can, to have digital communications or is it just best still to just like have a phone call or a conference call or what does that look like these days? David Lane (13:58) It's really a blend of both, right? So to answer your first question, yeah, we absolutely have a number of pieces of unique software that were developed specifically around the needs of the business to be able to drive that velocity of getting ready to build, taking some of those cycles out and kind of having a very non-traditional accelerated process to both be able to do assembly verification as well as preparing for that build concurrently. so that we're not having to waste cycles of time on our side. And that speeds it up when we're able to provide that better level of communication. The company does use a lot of different AI enabled tools that are helping from the standpoint of the speed of communication, being able to monitor the status of where we are within the job, but nothing beats having a client services person that has their finger on the pulse of that build, know what the customer's expectations are. are on continuous communication, keeping them informed and aware of what the status is. At the same time, we understand the design engineers end up working really odd hours trying to keep on schedule. So we use both a digital form of communication. We prioritize all of our communications internally based off of that. And we've got teams that are working on the data around the clock as well. Judy Warner (15:19) I, about a year ago, I had the opportunity to speak with Sean Patterson, who has such unique background. And one thing I really heard him saying, you know, he left the industry, went to work to Amazon and got a sneak peek or, you know, drank from the fire hose of, of some of those communications. So I was interested to see, you know, it's been about a year since I've talked to him about how you're leveraging some of those. those modern tools because it's certainly showing up everywhere, but we haven't settled in and AI is so new. And so I just always think that's a point of interest to our audience. David Lane (16:00) And it is a heavy focus for the entire Summit Interconnect team. And we're leveraging that. And we've got a lot going on in the background that we're not ready to share yet, but there will be more to come. Judy Warner (16:03) Mm-hmm. Very good. That's hopeful information, I think. I think if we don't get on that train, honestly, David, I think we're going to be left behind. And I'm encouraged to see you guys hopping on and not being stuck in the old ways and leveraging some of the modern tools that are available. overall, you look... Yes, exactly. David Lane (16:19) You're right. Exactly right. Embrace it or be left behind, right? Judy Warner (16:37) Before I let you go, like paint us a picture of say the old disconnected way, what it does to an engineer's schedule or work life and doing it in a new, more interconnected way with maybe spin tools like what's the win? David Lane (16:54) Well, I mean, the old metaphor stands true, right? The traditional way of doing things is you've got the design engineer and then you throw the design literally over the wall to the guys that are responsible for doing the manufacturing and managing the supply chain. They play telephone a handful of times, try to drive the EMS partner to prioritize the build of that prototype. And having had that responsibility in the OEM world is where I first started understanding the sensitivity. had my customer when I was in the OEM world was the design engineering team and I had to drive that EMS partner to get the circuits done so that we can get on with the development cycle. And invariably that loss of time and that many steps of communication, we lost the speed, we lost the accuracy of the communication. We didn't maintain what the contract was from the standpoint of communicating back to the engineer so they knew what to do or knew what to expect. from the standpoint of the impacts to their schedule, findings within the design. And there were just so many gaps in that entire communication process that it created opportunities for failure. And it resulted in higher costs, slower time to market, fewer products being able to reach the market in a timely fashion, missing the market window, or simply missing out on the entire value proposition from the standpoint of not understanding what the impact is from the design on the cost as well as other impacts such as lead time of the materials and other factors that drive cost unnecessarily. And that's really what we set out to do within the business unit is break down those barriers, remove that wall, replace that wall with a door or better yet, remove the wall entirely for open communication and drive that velocity. Judy Warner (18:43) Well, you are uniquely equipped to have this conversation and I'm so glad we got to have it and share it with our audience because you yeah, and you you felt all those things in real world and I've had those situations too and that's the school of hard knocks. And I love that you have been brought on board to help facilitate these in a really meaningful way. And I shared that. David Lane (18:51) I appreciate the opportunity. Lived it. Judy Warner (19:12) that longing to make life just easier for everyone. And I don't know how we do that if we just don't give stakeholders, know, doors that are open on both sides so we can see the playing field. So, well, congratulations and thank you again for this interesting conversation. Before I let you go, can you tell us where folks can go to learn more about the Assembly Division of Summit Interconnect? David Lane (19:37) Absolutely, and what I'll do is I'll follow up with additional information for your listeners to be able to have a lot of that communication But the first easiest way to reach out to us is at www.summitinterconnect.com Judy Warner (19:50) Great. Well, David, thank you again. I've really enjoyed having this insightful conversation with you. And I hope, you know, next year you'll come back to us and you'll have more insights and some case studies that can give more insight. So thanks again for joining. David Lane (20:06) Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity and I hope that your listeners and viewers have enjoyed it as well. Thank you. Judy Warner (20:12) Thank you. For our listeners, I trust that you enjoyed this insider view into this amazing removing the barriers to innovation with David Lane. Thank you for joining us this week. I will go get all those links from David and I'll see you next week. Until then, remember to always stay connected to the ecosystem.