A New Facility in India for PCB Fabricator ACI

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

Dhanani: We are looking for medium to high, I would say.

Matties: There's not a lot of that left in the U.S., so this might be the beginning of a trend of some volume production coming back.

Bryan Ricke: We hope so.

Dhanani: That's exactly it, we hope so. It's coming back. A lot of the OEMs who have facilities here in the U.S., but also in North America, in Mexico and South America, are trying to keep all the manufacturing here in North America basically.

Matties: From a buyer's perspective, what is it that they should understand about circuit board fabricators when they're looking at making a choice of a fabricator and a selection for a long-term supplier?

Dhanani: Especially for the buyers, I remember a few years back they were investing a lot of money and energy in approving the new vendors. Because of the economy and because of the competition, they were getting out of business. I mean, they were in the business and were doing well for a couple of years, but the next thing they know they cannot survive. Back then, the pricing wasn't the only thing, you didn’t know if your suppliers were going to be in business in the future. Now it's not that big of a deal if they're going to be in business, but how open are they to keeping up with the latest and greatest technology? Because we can have the very good drilling machines and very good plating lines, but it's only good for what we do today. Are we keeping up with them for the future technology? That is the main thing. So I would say if they're partnering with a company like ACI, that we will not only have what we can do today, but we're going to continue to grow with what we can do tomorrow.

Matties: You're obviously looking forward with vision, there's no doubt about that, just seeing what you're doing in India and other things. How many employees worldwide do you have?

Dhanani: Worldwide we've got a little bit over 250 employees.

Matties: What sort of revenue do you guys do?

Dhanani: About $17 to 18 million.

Matties: Is this a privately owned company?

Dhanani: Yes it is.

Matties: How are you funding all your growth?

Dhanani: Most of it is self-funded. Of course, we’ve got very good credit and that kind of helps in getting some money from the bank.

Matties: Are you taking on new partners or anything like that?

Dhanani: No, not at all. Not yet.

Matties: So that could be part of the plan?

Dhanani: It could be a part of it, because I've talked to a few other people and also my nephew Hari is doing a Master’s in Business, and he wants to see, "Hey, how can we grow this business to the next level?" To make it to that level you're going to need a lot of funding and you can open up those possibilities in future.

Matties: What does the next level look like? Some assembly and box build or are you already offering that sort of service?

Dhanani: We are offering some assemblies. Basically these are hand-soldered assemblies; with a lot of the antennas you cannot utilize surface mount techniques because there are no components. Basically what we do is board-to-board assemblies, and that assembly has to be done really well, and with the solder flow done based on J standard. If it's not done right, then you're going to have a lot of issues on the performance, with PIM being the main issue. We're already providing those kinds of services here in the U.S.

Matties: What do we see for future growth? What sort of direction do you go?

Dhanani: Right now we still have a lot to grow in the market we are in. As you can see, these boards that we are building continue to get more and more condensed, so by moving some of the high volume work to the new factory, our other factory will have available empty space where we're going to keep continuing to expand that market and do a lot of the high-tech stuff that's coming in the future.

Matties: Bryan, what’s your position at ACI?

Ricke: I'm director of sales and business development. Both Raj and I have been in this business a long time. I've been in the business since ‘76, in multiple technologies. I'm a technologist as well as a sales guy. I like to take a look at what we can do here going forward with this technology. I think we have a long way to go. These antenna PCBs are getting more sophisticated. Right now they're basically double-sided, not plated through. There's some plated-through technology, but, believe it or not, all these guys are starting to develop multi-layer structures to support the advent of 5G. Our job is to take a look at that and make sure we have the right technology.

Matties: How challenging is that?

Ricke: It's very challenging to put multi-layers in, especially in North America, where the Chinese are already quite good at it. That's going to be a challenge for us.

Matties: Is this a case where we're going to copy the Chinese?

Ricke: Maybe so. How do you like that? You know what, again, the Chinese are very automated, and they must become automated. Our vision here is going semi-automated and then try for fully automated as much as we can. We're going to have to bring that over to our multi-layer side because our customers are demanding that. We're talking about massive MIMO antennas, we're talking about phased array antennas, and everything is getting very sophisticated.

Matties: The whole spectrum. In your many years of being in this industry, what's the greatest surprise that has come along?

Ricke: I’ll tell you what, believe it or not, I started off making materials at a company called Sheldahl in Northfield, Minnesota.

Matties: I know Sheldahl. They were doing a lot of reel-to-reel stuff too.

Ricke: Yes, absolutely. We were the biggest flex company in the world.

Matties: I was a shareholder—sadly so.

Ricke: That is sad if you were a shareholder at that time because they never made any money in flex. With that said, flex was going to become the big to-do. It never did, it just didn't. I was there 10 years almost, but it was in materials and material technology where I saw incredible advances. I think that has helped all of us out tremendously over the years. I've seen a lot of that happen, and, of course, the computerization and all the software. Look at what it cost to tool a job years ago. I remember building all of our artworks on a camera back and nobody had a computer. It's nuts. You look at the evolution of computerization in this business and it’s really been a big deal.

Matties: Was it a surprise for you when the business went to China?

Ricke: To a point, yes, but not really. I had experienced that with Japan when I was at Sheldahl. That's why Sheldahl had such a tough time. The Japanese came in with incredible quality systems and technology and wiped out everybody. We got wiped out. To see the Chinese rise again, you saw the same thing happen. What's really interesting about the RF business, being a flex guy, is that when I was doing flex for a lot of different companies—I worked for many of them—it was a big buzz word. You finally had the Internet and people would put in "flex circuits."

Well, 90% of them had no idea how to make one, but they would try. They were board guys and they went broke. They went crazy. The owner would be jumping around going, "The scrap rate! Look at this stuff, it's $50 a foot and you threw out garbage cans full of it." The RF business is really interesting because the materials are ultra-expensive, and it poses a really big challenge in having a high quality level and very low scrap rate. If you have high scrap, you're in big trouble in this business.

In a normal board, let's say it's 20–25% of the selling cost. When you're talking RF products, you're talking stuff that eclipses 40–50% of the selling price of the product, which makes a very big challenge out of it. What's very interesting about RF and antennas, when you look at it, it looks really simple. It's like, "Oh, we can make that. Anybody can make that simple, double-sided, not plated-through.” Well have at it. You have at it and make that profitably. “RF” is now the new buzz word like flex was years ago.

I think the other thing I'd like to point out, Barry, is that we make all the long antennas. We make antennas that are up to 10 feet in length on Teflon™ substrates for lots of applications, but mainly medical. That's a really big niche market for us.

Matties: There's not many people doing that.

Ricke: No, not at all. Now we don't do multilayers, but that’s also part of the vision that I have. Taking all the technology we have to image and plate through all these really large structures, and see that go to multilayer technology because we have X amount inquiries every month, "Where's the multilayers? You guys build big, long stuff, why can't you guys build us a multilayer that's eight feet long?" That's something that will come down the line.

Matties: That's a special press.

Ricke: Very. Well, we would probably go autoclave with something that monstrous, but again, we have all the rest of the infrastructure here, but we don't have the way to put it together yet.

Dhanani: The bonding.

Ricke: It's been a very interesting ride. I'm getting more towards the end of the line, but these guys are really young. That's the other thing, it's hard to bring young people into this business and get them enthused. I had an opportunity to go through the wonderful rocket ship part of the business.

Matties: With what you guys are doing, and the new thinking of supply chains, we may see another rocket ship taking off now.

Ricke: We hope so.

Matties: There's a new generation of technology.

Dhanani: That is the reason, as you can see, you know the challenges and having the new factory in the U.S., because we know that something is going to be coming, and what we like to do is stay ready.

Matties: That's what caught my attention yesterday is how ready you guys are. You know something that maybe the others don't and congratulations.

Ricke: We hope we do.

Matties: I appreciate you spending time with us today.

Ricke: We really enjoyed it.

Matties: Thank you.

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