PODCAST EPISODE

								 [00:00:00] Judy Warner: Hi everyone, it's Judy Warner. Welcome back to this Week's Ecosystem podcast. Today I'm joined with Sean Patterson, the COO of Summit Interconnect Technologies Summit is the largest privately held P C B manufacturer in North America. We talk about things that you need to know that manufacturers wish you knew to make your boards go more smoothly through manufacturing and hopefully save you a lot of time and money.

I wanna give you a little background on Sean because he has such an. Interesting background, and I think it'll give you good context for our conversation. Sean was a US Naval Submarine officer, and he got his system engineering degree from the US Naval Academy. Then he went on to get his masters from M I T in Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Then he went to work as an [00:01:00] executive at ttm, where he oversaw manufacturing operations of their aero. Aerospace and defense facilities. Then he did something unexpected, which was leave the industry and go to work for Amazon, where he took on a huge team, started out a pilot program, built a big team to help Amazon with their middle mile, and through this process he learned so much that he hopes to bring back to the P c B industry.

Additionally he worked for as an executive of startup and all these things, give Sean a very interesting perspective that I think will really inform and interest you in our conversation. Without further ado, let's jump right into our conversation with Sean Patterson of Summit. Hi Sean. Thanks so much for joining us today.

I'm excited to talk to you about my favorite subject, PCBs.

[00:01:50] Sean Patterson: Great. Thanks for inviting me today, Judy.

[00:01:53] Judy Warner: I wanna just dive right in and talk about from your perspective, someone [00:02:00] who's been on every side of this industry. What do you wish engineers and PCB layout professionals knew about PCBs?

[00:02:12] Sean Patterson: Yeah.

You talked about my background a little bit at the beginning of Of this filming. And I think, I've had a pretty broad view of different industries. I have some different engineering degrees I think than typical pcb individuals from control system engineering at the Academy and Nuclear engineering and mit.

And what that's given me is a broader view of. Multiple engineering disciplines. Plus I've been in multiple different industries between the Navy and Amazon, some startup companies 3D printing healthcare, these kind of things. And having been at those companies as well as customers and suppliers over those companies what I've really found is the PCBs are, they're a pretty complex manufacturing process that's not appreciated very much.

I, I actually find it's, I'd say the most complex [00:03:00] raw manufacturing process that I've ever seen. And I wanna separate that between assembly and PCB fabrication. And a lot of what people see are, the components on boards, a fully populated board. And you know that, that final state is assembly.

And that's where a lot of contract manufacturers in the EMS space understand. And a lot of people don't understand the PCB fabrication, which is the bear board, no components on. Even though Summit does offer some quick turn services in assembly, that kind of ties off in removing some time issues to, to get customers products faster.

The core of what we do is PCB fabrication only. And that background I just discussed is, has really convinced me that, we're taking some raw materials of copper foil, laminate, some pre prag in the middle. And we're taking those raw materials and I think it was like a ball of clay, and we're massaging that ball of clay over and over again through multiple steps.

Yes, there are some PCBs you can make in a day, but on average we start to get to [00:04:00] 30, 60, even six months sometimes of the same circuit board that we're working on for seven days a week and 24 7. And it takes that long to process it. Because what these boards do see is multiple engineering disciplines in the entire process.

There's electrical engineering, there's mechanical engineering, there's chemical engineering, industrial engineering, and a whole host of other ones like optical engineering, et cetera. And. When you add it all up, it all goes in this same ball of clay. And so PC B M manufacturing is really manufacturing an end component.

That is an electromechanical functioning thing. That is the only in, in most bombs, and electronic bomb stack is the only built component in that entire supply chain. Every single circuit board. Is different for whatever end product it goes in semiconductors, there's a lot of the same, it's a one toman relationship of the number of I seven, processors that go inside of multiple motherboards, even different revisions of those motherboards.

They all have different design [00:05:00] and the only unique part is that PCB and it goes inside a very complex manufacturing process. And so what I wish the engineers would appreciate or start to understand Is how that process works, because fundamentally, your cost, which comes down to the material selection for performance that we can help with that cost, that the the amount of time it takes to build something and the yield.

And most of that is driven by design. We, as a fabricator, you're often not brought into the design cycle at an appropriate time in order to make a board. Successfully produced, right? Most fabricators, including Summit, and I use this word like this sort of statement, anybody can yield anything once there are plenty of board shops that can build something and we can do it if you like.

If you're just in dire strait, say, I really need you to do it, the design I have, and we'll go and build it, and it may have a 10% yield. And unless you're having that active conversation with your supplier, Especially if you're gonna use suppliers for prototype and then [00:06:00] shift it over when you go to production, it's very important to understand how your design affected the yield, the costs and everything.

Before you wind up in a situation where you did a prototype from a company that says, we can do anything. And then you move it over to production and say, yeah, we're gonna start yielding it. But you're starting at 30, 40% yields, and your timeline and your deliveries you need do not match up to a a yield like that.

And so it's very important for engineers to appreciate the complexity of the manufacturing process and how they're designed. Affects that and work with manufacturers like Summit, that have a prototyping to volume option in the United States because then we can transfer the knowledge and take you on that journey from prototyping to production while we're working on yields.

Now, what is certainly preferable at the end of the day is to utilize our field application engineering team, or our design our DFM designed for manufacturing services while you are doing the [00:07:00] design so that. Y day one of the entire process. You just cut out tons of back and forth and know that your design is up to standards from a reliability point of view, and as well as the quality of, sorry the throughput and qual internal quality that drives through the throughput and yields and therefore cost and delivery times.

And I think so I wish they would know when to bring us into that process. Yes.

[00:07:26] Judy Warner: And I think. I feel so much the same, and I've lived it right because of being in sales and marketing, but working with engineers for decades, specifically around the P C B and when we basically let our PC B supply chain go to China.

It's like I've lived that whole journey and we lost so much appreciation. My, my friend Anne-Marie calls them little green squares, right? And if we see them as a line item on a bomb[00:08:00] and I'm an engineer and I miss that, or I just design something for efficacy or timing, and then I throw it to my buyer or to my cm, And I haven't had that conversation.

So much gets lost in there and so much pain happens in that spot. And I also have a friend, Eli Hughes. I did a podcast with him a couple of weeks ago, and he talks about Fullstack Hardware engineering and what he says is, Be aware of your upstream and downstream stakeholders and I would say the bare p c B is one for engineers that at least I see, and you're confirming for me here is that's a piece that's gotten lost and specifically is now where more Es have come outta university with.

It's not the tribal knowledge that the older people in our [00:09:00] generation have gained over decades. Correct. So there's that gap. And I think this is the perfect way to self-educate and fill that gap. Yeah. That's, at least, that's what I'm saying. And you'd brought up a point to me once and I also share this, is this actually interesting for an engineering brain?

Yeah. It's a fun field trip

[00:09:23] Sean Patterson: that I totally agree. We talk about the reasons to, to want to engage your manufacturer upfront and upfront it can be both in the design cycle and helping on a specific design, but can also just be broad-based knowledge of, lunch and learns.

We'll come teach, we'll do webinars, all these kind of things for your company in order to educate. But from an engineer's point of view, that's a reason to go and see is to help your designs. But just from a pure geek perspective, which most engineers are like, it's a really cool process to see.

And I think just by seeing it and being excited about seeing how things are made, like the show, how it's made, right? Like the pc b like to actually go through the actual technical real process for what [00:10:00] are probably more engineered components today as a PCB is versus a commoditized.

Mindset that people have. When you order a PCB with your blueprints and your Gerber files, we don't go to a shelf and pull it off and say, here you go. It's no hit that you back. We do pre-production engineering, go through an entire cycle and build it from scratch when you order it, there is no.

Shelf

[00:10:21] Judy Warner: which sometime I know you're you're VP of engineering, Jerry Partita and I have done a lot together and I appreciate him so much. And, for people who are in the P C B fabrication industry, we can start to sound whiny about it. And that's not the point. The point is we want to help engineers so much.

If you spend a day, Committing to some self-education and I think you told me that you do virtual and in person, which most, summit is just one of my favorites. I have a lot of history with the company, but most board shops will do this. All board [00:11:00] shops don't have the scope of resources to do it really well, which is why I appreciated you guys so much and why wanted to have you on, cuz I really think you could speak to this point, right?

We,

[00:11:12] Sean Patterson: I mean we cover again from prototyping to full volume. But we also cover pretty much every type of board out there. Yes. RF,

[00:11:18] Judy Warner: rigid Flex, including RF and Rigid Flex. What are. Which are not easy.

[00:11:23] Sean Patterson: And assembly prototyping services on top of that. So we can take you to that next level.

Yeah. And we have resources to, to take volume as well on the assembly side. That would be probably more outsourced, but that tho those things combined are really, it's what's important to that engineer and it help, help us make you successful. And therefore makes the relationship successful.

Yeah. Because once you get out this prototyping phase it often gets transferred to a buyer. Yeah. And that, and the buyer is, especially with the way treat PCBs are treated, most companies goes into a commoditized biomarket. And so now you're trying, these timelines are assumed that they work perfectly, but they're not informed by yield and what an engineer had done originally.

And now you're saying, okay, we got it and it works. [00:12:00] Yay. And you put it over to the buyer side. Now if there's problems, your fabricator's gonna say we need help, to change the design in order to make this more producible and hit your timelines right? And your cost targets more.

Now as an engineer where you thought you got rid of this thing off your plate, you're coming back to the party with a lot more people involved because now you have larger timelines involved with your end product. And so there's some self-protection that can happen as well.

And again, we can do this all up front and the knowledge is transferrable. If we're working on with one thing, with one product line and helping you there. That knowledge generally is applicable to everything else.

[00:12:32] Judy Warner: And I think that's a message, besides,

[00:12:35] Sean Patterson: It's not a means to the end.

It's, yes. It's gained knowledge that has been, to your point, lost over time. A lot of OEMs used to make their own circuit boards. Some of that knowledge is gone. And and the, the PCB market in the US was crushed during the, the.com bust. But now it's coming back.

There are capacity constraints in the United States that are significant. Significant. And so if you really wanna be even more successful now, you have to get that producibility up because, [00:13:00] Fabricators. May take somebody else's because it's just gonna be an easier road to yield and you're gonna lose excuse me, cost you more at the end of the day.

And that's because the US is getting capacity to trained because the com there's more complex designs that are, again, more engineered components that are causing multiple board within board lamination cycles. That's inherently eroded capacity of the United States. While at the same time things that used to be mechanical are becoming electrical.

Yeah. And your light bulb has a circuit board in it. Now you have cars, EVs, right? Yeah. They used to just be mechanical stuff, but it's the same output or more if you will of cars. But now it's all coming into an industry that has been, doesn't have as much capacity as it used to in the United States.

You have a cheap cost to launch in the satellite world now, and most of those designs are still built in the United States for satellite. So there's a huge satellite demand, which comes with even more complexity on top of it and reliability. They're all going to the same fabricators. And certainly geopolitical pressures on the military side with replacement because of things like Ukraine and whatnot.

Yeah. And there's a huge demand. [00:14:00] And so you want to be a partner with your supplier that you know you're going to be successful together because there's even there's just less options today.

[00:14:10] Judy Warner: Yeah. So it's interesting to, so let's pivot to that part of the conversation. As I said, Most US board suppliers would gladly open their doors.

So Summit is not the only one. However, I've been watching you guys for a while and watching what you're doing and how you're doing it and it, and the strategic, the strategy that's going on as specific, specifically when you and I met, I was exci excited to hear some of the things that were on your mind as someone who left the industry and came back, which is part of my journey too.

And that is these reshoring efforts and not just being about the bottom line, right? So how do you make board manufacturing more modern? How do you take some of those things you [00:15:00] learn from all those different disciplines and bring them to bear at Summit? Things like Industry 4.0.

Yeah. All of that. I'd like to hear you unpack that a bit more. Sure. So

[00:15:10] Sean Patterson: we'll talk about like summons vision for modernizing the PCB industry. You're right. I did exit the industry for a while. I'm also not, as most people in the industry, I'm not really a grown within industry personally cuz I did enter after the military, it was probably about 30 years old I think at the time when I worked for ttm.

And you have an industry that sort of got. For lack of better word, beat down the commoditization part. And so they, they really started running on shoes, stringing bu budgets for a while. Yeah. And the industry was very successful and a lot of people stayed within it. And what we didn't do though is get outside influence outside the industry, influence to bring things like industry Ford Auto to the table.

And can't, some of if you're not like non-cash to cash business, if you're a cash to cash business, You can't really afford to do that stuff or invest in it. What's really my ROI out of this [00:16:00] besides, if I found out working and putting these things in place, then, where are we gonna be 20, 30 years from now?

And so you have to invest in that. So Summit is coming back and I came back for a few reasons. One is to try to make a P C B company, or I'll say try to, we will make a P C B company that is customer centric. Yay. We need to do that. Cuz it's in my blood from Amazon now. But it's the right thing to do because that is your relationship with the customer so that we don't have to have podcasts or I'm begging engineers to involve us at front because you have those relationships that are formed because you're coming to us and saying, this is what our expectations are and we're delivering what you expect because at the end of the day, you the only. The only people I tell 'em, the team, the only people paying the bills are the customer, the, I don't care what you say, the only people that really, that pay anything is their customer. And so you need to treat them as they should. The airtron industry always has that whole, the customer's always it's true. I mean it's a true concept because that's all you have. And so you have to treat your customer correct. Which means doing what you say you're gonna [00:17:00] do. Now, some of the challenges with the industry is this sort of, Ford escaped it a little bit. There's not like machine to machine connectivity, like there are many industries.

And so Summit is investing in the engineering disciplines around that to make it happen for Summit. Because there is nothing that you can just grab off the shelf in the industry and just go and apply it. It doesn't exist. And so we are investing in new engineering disciplines that are supplemental to the factories, like ai artificial intelligence, machine learning more on the machine learning side.

With Regional process engineering where we're taking best learned practices between all sites and ensuring that we're doing it the same. So we get a cons, a consistent customer experience. And you're not, we're not gonna have a lesson learned in one site for some product, have, and then a year later we learn it again in another facility.

That's embarrassing. And it's also a waste of my own resources. So ensuring we, we break down those barriers cuz most PCB companies that have more than one site will call it a roll up for a lack of better words or a conglomerate. They wind up being loosely affiliated [00:18:00] competitors at the end of the day, and Summit is not gonna do that.

We can't do that. That's not the purpose of it. What's the value that Summit as a platform is bringing to our sites and what are the, what value is that site bringing to its customers? And so we need to provide the sites with more. Tools in order to satisfy customer demand. The complexity of PCBs has increased such that you do need Ford Oh, mechanisms because you can't just doing the same continuous improvement over and over again.

You need more data, but those data streams do not exist. They do not. We're applying them the scheduling. Of PCBs is, has gotten extremely difficult, particularly in the last three years with this capacity erosion I'm talking about. And so we're investing in that space from local an S N O P kind of approach with hardware, software systems that are not inside of our industry because we do not have a solution that we can just go to.

And PCBs are a little unique. And so there's some development work that we're doing with software development engineers that are summit owned and we're trying to do this so that we can ensure that the commitments that we make to our customer we deliver [00:19:00] for. And so we want to be in a state, say three years from now that says, Hey customer, it's gonna be 45 days for you to get that circuit board before we would've told you 30, 20, whatever.

Cuz we tried to add it up in the absence of any other product line inside the facility, which is how things have been done historically by most suppliers. We're gonna tell you 45 and it's gonna be 45, not we're gonna tell you what you want to hear. Yeah. And then we're gonna deliver it how we could.

And we wanna get to that place where there's an, that honest assessment on both the quality, capacity, and pricing. Because the customer's all you got at the end of the day. It's so true,

[00:19:37] Judy Warner: and I'm trying, yeah. All those

[00:19:39] Sean Patterson: engineering kinda things coming together to deliver for the customer in a customer obsessed way, while at the same time providing pre CB prototyping through volume and assembly as well.

[00:19:49] Judy Warner: And it's, it occurs to me that if you do it, others may follow one, it'll be better for engineers overall. [00:20:00] It'll probably help. Reduce cost to them. But if you start applying these things and actually doing it, Sean, I imagine it's one of those scenarios and Rising tide raises all boats. It sounds like it's good for Summit, it's good for engineers and it's good for the industry.

And one thing I'm specifically thinking about is I interviewed David Child at P C B AA a couple months ago. And I didn't know much about P C B aa, they're advocating in DC to get some of either the chips, acts money or set aside money. So our little industry does have some. Augmented resources to invest and to modernize.

And what I noticed is Summit has been instrumental to P C B A A. And I love that. I love that you're Yeah, right there. And again, rising tides raises all boats. So my suspicion is, as you do it, it will help the [00:21:00] industry and engineers, which is to me, a win all around.

[00:21:05] Sean Patterson: Yeah, I think there's this, this little statement there's no winner in life, right?

It's not a zero sum game. We're not correct to stuff out our competitors or anything like that. We want the industry being successful is successful for us. There is no like a hundred percent monopoly that you ever want to aspire to. This isn't, you should never aspire there. And therefore it should be working with your competitors.

Right? And that has happened more and more. It certainly broader than the circuit board industry and cooperation, right? Certainly our OEMs, particularly on the defense side, do it all the time. Back and forth ping pong. Yeah, they do. Who supplies what and what component and supply chain to build a platform.

And so it's important to work with that. I certainly give a plug for David in, in going into the P C B A A. Yeah. Joining that even as a customer is important because we are legislating. That also includes things like the P C B E A and I P C. And yes, it, I now that I think you see two major things happening the recognition by the United States that there's a problem aside from the CHIPS Act, which I think has some more [00:22:00] political things tied to it.

One, the president signed off that we are Title three funding available. Okay, so that's a recognition that the PCB industry is a critical industry for the United States and one that needs some extra help to get going again, from, again, pre pre.com collapse, right? Which will be about 3000 circuit board shops.

We're in about 200 now. In the United States. So there's that recognition and then you have the defense bills that are also recognizing it. And certainly on, specifically on the defense side, but they're recognizing it through more available funding. You have things like the P C B E A that's working on pc, a concept called NewCo.

Yeah. In order to bring really manufacturing that has been done overseas the first time, we're kinda like bringing Oh, okay. Talent and resources back to the United States in order to yield smaller design patterns. So mainly active Got it. Msat processes, they really don't. Meaningfully exists in the United [00:23:00] States the way it's done for Yeah. Your smartphone, if you will. Yeah. And we're trying to do that and those are shared facilities among all the fabricators to get this into designs in the United States that are gonna be fabricated. And then we all learn together in order to take the.

The, to take North America to the next level. Yes. And we need to do that together because you're not just going to, you're not gonna solve world hunger on your own. And you have to do it together. Yeah. Yeah. And so there are a bunch of organizations, someone as a leader in a lot of those founding member and most of them I

[00:23:28] Judy Warner: know.

I love that. I, again, this is why I've become a Summit fan and been tracking you guys so closely for so long. Cuz somebody needs to take the lead. And I think you guys are. Maybe one of the most involved, or if not one of the key leadership in all these associations. So again, I think it makes a whole industry better.

So kudos to you guys and them just hiring you, I think is a vote in that direction to [00:24:00] modernize and to think differently. So I think that's great. You and I are talking in an insular way about an industry that we've both spent a lot of time in. But when we talk about solving some of these problems like supply chain, domestic manufacturing, getting additive, onshore doing all these things, why are the people that are listening to this podcast who are engineers care?

Like what? I know it will help them, and I have suspicions why. But in your mind, why do you think. This will matter or how it will impact them directly in their day-to-day.

[00:24:39] Sean Patterson: Sure. I think it ties back to some of the stuff we started with in, in terms of getting to know your fabricator while doing design, inviting them into the design process.

And where, again, summit's positioning of customer centricity. New age technologies, or I'll say call 2023, let's just catch up with 2023 with industry fraud, auto, different ways of doing Scheduling softwares how we do [00:25:00] process engineering and really becoming a pure data driven type company from an engineering perspective.

On then engineer side why it's really important to your audience is One, it's cool. Two is how it impacts your delivery of your own product lines and and for you to be successful in your own career. Yes. You have issues with if you say I'm gonna go overseas for this kind of stuff, you do have bad actors that are playing in overseas.

Who's to say that you can't put a small chip? On the middle of a trace in a pcb. Before it's even assembled. And you already have something that could be a bad actor that is embedding these things inside where you do not have control of your supply chain. And so certainly the military cares about this, but certainly I think everybody else should care from a.

Regardless of what industry you're coming from, at the end of the day, most of the things that are made inside the United States in the high mix, low volume world, you're either designed to kill somebody or if they don't work, wind up killing somebody. Yeah. And so it is of the utmost importance to maintain that quality and also make sure that you have a secure [00:26:00] supply chain by the fabrication inside the United States by trusted boundaries.

Like Summit has as a, certification. The part yields all these kind of things that we discussed at the beginning there, that just makes your life easier. It allows you to then trust that your buying chain, once it goes to volume, is executing the program. And so tho those are important.

Also, by the way, turn times are coming down too, if you're working with it. And so you can, be done the job faster, yield it faster not just in volume. And so those, I think those are the things that would, help an engineer out aside from, again, all those things come back to understanding your fabricator and partnering with a company that wants to be customer centric to be successful together.

Yeah,

and

[00:26:41] Judy Warner: it's just it's so much morphed into I just get my boards. Once it goes into production or pre-production, it goes to their contract manufacturer and they're like, what board? They handle all that, which they do, but then the knowledge base doesn't get back to you. [00:27:00] That says, Like you said, it's a knowledge that can go across all the products you build, save you money on every design, make you a better engineer.

And what I really like and what I'm thinking about is the one thing is if you really do what you say you're gonna do at Summit Sean, people will get their boards on time and they'll be right and their yields will be better and their costs are lower. To me there's no downside.

[00:27:26] Sean Patterson: No. And there's nothing better, especially in the quick turn area than a customer sending us a design on a Friday night for some new engineer that needs to get this thing made.

And the awesome kind of, you see it in their face when we spin it up on the weekend and hand deliver it to their desk on a Monday morning. Yeah, we make them look very good and it's such a cool feeling because you're taking these tangible, intangible designs that are just on a computer and making them into a real thing.

And so that, that's a really cool feeling that we get for delivering our commitment there. And I also think that it's that cool [00:28:00] feeling that certainly those young engineers that, are making a statement are like, Hey, I got this done. And being able to walk into their boss and say, there it is.

You saw me on a Friday. Here it is now. Tho those are really cool.

[00:28:10] Judy Warner: And it's not something we're. Super accustomed to, but especially after Covid, we all live in a Amazon world. I order it yesterday. I get it on my doorstep today. So we think we could just do that with circuit boards and in some cases you can, if you just have all the right pieces in place and.

[00:28:30] Sean Patterson: And design producible and everything like

[00:28:32] Judy Warner: that, right? And they're design producible and all of that. But I do think it takes a little effort on the engineers part to self-educate and to, get the p c b, be aware of that part of your stakeholder in the process so it doesn't come back to you, or you don't have to do three spins instead of one.

There's a lot of reasons to do it, and I love talking about it because, I came from that world. Okay. I know you're busy, I gotta let you go, but let's give [00:29:00] folks some places to go, at least at Summit. So I know you said they can come to a year place, so if they're local or semi-local, if they're in the Western United States, it's a pretty easy visit.

So where can they learn more about scheduling a visit? Let's start there. Sure.

[00:29:19] Sean Patterson: On our website that I think you're gonna provide those resources at the end of this video. You can go to our website and schedule a visit through those portals, or if you're already are engaged in the sales process, through just get, contact your buyers.

You can get a tour in through the, through our sales representatives. Okay. Or through field application engineering as well. They can come out and see your site see be on your site, and they can also bring you back to us. We do have facilities in Toronto. Chicago, we have assembly in Denver, and then we have two facilities in Northern California and three in Southern California.

Okay, good. That's a good point. Spread around and we have, because of Covid, we do have the ability to do remote forced our hands to do these kind of remote tours as well. Virtual tours. I think you get a better experience when you're on site.

[00:29:59] Judy Warner: I do [00:30:00] too. A hundred percent.

Although I've been advocating for virtual tours for a long time, I think it's a great ad for those that can't fly or don't have the time or the bandwidth or whatever. It's a good option, but I think you'll learn way more if you go smell some plating chemicals or something, hopefully not too much cuz your ventilation is good, right?

Yes, absolutely. Okay, so people can visit your website, your FAEs, the sales people, they can find it on the website. I will put that link in. I think you provided that for me before. Where can they do you have a blog or some kind of knowledge? They could follow you on social media cause I know Jerry writes a lot on LinkedIn, a lot on there.

I

[00:30:43] Sean Patterson: was having conversation and I with LinkedIn, through LinkedIn last night. Yes. We do have a blog that we have started on the website that's starting to generally Okay. Talk. There are other fabricators that have making blogs for a long time and I do actually encourage you. Learning that broadly too, because that learning things do does help us all as an industry.

Yeah. [00:31:00] There are books available as well. I will tell you, they're more difficult to understand cause they've been, they're just like ones that were written a long time ago and we keep 'em up to date. Yeah. But they do tell you the 10,000 different ways that things are manufactured for each specific process.

And so it's not as, Doesn't add up in your head the way you think it will. But if you want to get into the nitty gritty of what are the actual chemical reactions happening in the plating tanks, then that would be a place to go geek it out. Particularly the PCP Handbook. That's the

[00:31:25] Judy Warner: one. Yep. I'll put that link in too.

So that's happy and Clyde Cook.

[00:31:33] Sean Patterson: I don't, yeah, I'm not sure the author Anyways. I know I did buy was the first thing I ever bought before I, when I got hired by TTMs. Yes. And then, yeah. Yeah, it really confused me because it does tell you everything, but but what it does get into the real specific engineering process, engineering of how things work, so those are other resources that you can use as well. Okay. Also getting involved in ipc, I would say that would be a great. Resource.

[00:31:53] Judy Warner: Yeah. Being on, especially sitting on a, sitting on those committees, you will learn a ton. So don't think [00:32:00] that you can't join because you don't know a lot.

They're looking for warm bodies and you will learn along the way and you will evolve and I agree with you, it that will really impact your career. Okay, I'll add those links as well. Sean, thank you so much. Congratulations. Welcome back to the industry. Thank you. Can say once you're in it, you can't get away.

I think

[00:32:21] Sean Patterson: I took a hiatus. How was that? Sabbatical? Yeah.

[00:32:23] Judy Warner: Yeah, me too. So thank you again. Congratulations. Welcome back, and thank you and everything, all the teams doing at Summit. I'm really impressed with what I see and appreciate all you're doing. I'll let you go, but I hope you'll come back and update us as you get further down

[00:32:40] Sean Patterson: the road.

Great. Thank you Judy, and I appreciate what you're doing for the industry as well. Bringing all the engineers on the journey to be more informed about their supply chain.

[00:32:48] Judy Warner: That's my pleasure. For our listeners, thanks so much for joining us today. Make sure you go check out the show notes, everything we've talked about.

I'll put a link for you in the show notes. We hope this conversation has been helpful [00:33:00] to you. And if you follow for me any time, I've been saying, go to your board house. So not only do I say it, Sean says it too. If you have a chance to do it, go see, summit or go see one that's close to you. We appreciate you.

We'll see you next week. Until then, remember to always stay connected to the ecosystem.