Standard of Excellence: Speed vs. Quality in Customer Service
Knocking Down the Bone Pile: Revamp Your Components with BGA Reballing
Global Sourcing Spotlight: Balancing Speed and Flexibility Without Sacrificing Control
Partnership and Collaboration
June 28, 2022 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamEstimated reading time: 2 minutes
Dan Beaulieu and Nolan Johnson recently had a conversation with Christopher Kalmus of Aurora Circuits and Brigitte Lawrence of Brigitflex. Joining them was Jeff Brandman of Aismalibar North America. The group discussed the value of partnerships, noting how it has helped them win and keep business. They also describe a recent project for an OEM manufacturer in the automotive industry that served as a case study for this discussion.
Nolan Johnson: What does partnership mean in your working relationship?
Christopher Kalmus: It means working together, trying to solve a problem that’s of value to all of us.
Brigitte Lawrence: When a customer comes to us, needs something produced, and we don’t have everything at our fingertips, we can work together with others to help the customer. We can work together to accomplish it in the timeframe, money frame, and everything else to get it out to the assembler or our customer.
Johnson: Is this a tactical or a strategic kind of relationship?
Lawrence: Neither. It’s a friendship. In this type of situation, we’re not competing. We are working together underneath an umbrella to keep everything friendly and competitive free. We each have our own niche, we know where it’s at, and we don’t cross each other.
Johnson: So, by having complementary areas of specialty, you can work together, making those component pieces larger than the individual parts?
Lawrence: It’s larger than the industry when we put it together.
Dan Beaulieu: The way I see it, you have some operations that Chris can’t do, and he has some that you can’t do.
Kalmus: That’s right Dan. These are unusual times. We’re dealing with an industry that’s basically been devastated over the last two decades. You go back three decades, and the U.S./North America produced maybe 50–60% of all the circuit boards in the world. It was a highly resilient industry; it could take some body blows and still be okay. I’ve seen a lot of different estimates that we now produce probably less than 4% of the world’s production, while China currently is probably producing more than 50%.
Beaulieu: Some sources say over 80%.
Kalmus: Our industry is so stretched that it’s not even possible for everybody to have everything that they want, to do everything that they want. Partnerships, from materials to final assembly, help fill the void.
Lawrence: We must work together. We must trust each other. We must use each other’s machinery. Sometimes we are not allowed to collaborate, but we do it when we can. We do what we can to keep things here and work together as a team, keeping things here in the States. It’s not just building the product. It’s keeping the machinery running and keeping our factories running. It’s what it takes to build the product.
Kalmus: Circuit board innovations have always relied on people who have ideas, who know how to do things, and can extrapolate to other ways of doing things. To me, that’s probably the bigger part of our partnership. Brigitte and Chuck (Lawrence) are two unique people in the printed circuit board world, with their knowledge and what they’re capable of doing. We’ve always been innovative, going all the way back to Kalmus and Associates in the 1950s and 1960s.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the June 2022 issue of SMT007 Magazine, click here.
Share on:
Testimonial
"In a year when every marketing dollar mattered, I chose to keep I-Connect007 in our 2025 plan. Their commitment to high-quality, insightful content aligns with Koh Young’s values and helps readers navigate a changing industry. "
Brent Fischthal - Koh YoungSuggested Items
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
10/31/2025 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007Last week, the IMPACT conference took place in Taipei, bringing together advanced packaging experts from around the globe to share their knowledge. We’ll be bringing you post-conference coverage over the next few weeks, so look for that in our newsletters, and in the Advanced Electronic Packaging Digest. Other news seemed to have the U.S. at the center of the global discussions. My picks start in Phoenix, where TSMC, NVIDIA, and Amkor are all scrambling to establish new capabilities. There’s nothing like a strong demand signal to cause build-out, and AI chips are doing exactly that.
I-Connect007 Welcomes New Columnist: Leo Lambert, EPTAC
10/30/2025 | I-Connect007I-Connect007 is excited to announce a column by Leo Lambert, an industry veteran with 40 years of experience, an award winner, and technical director at EPTAC. This column, Learning With Leo, will explore the evolution and related challenges of electronics product assembly, especially as it relates to training.
Better Sustainability Policies for Electronics
10/29/2025 | Diana Radovan, Global Electronics AssociationI joined the Global Electronics Association in August 2025 as the director of sustainability policy. Since then, much has happened in terms of geopolitics and in the development and re-envisioning of sustainability policies in the industry. While the European Commission has released several legislative packages to simplify sustainability requirements (“omnibus”), these developments haven’t yet settled and are not in effect. Given the many recent and ongoing public consultations, with often conflicting input from a broad range of stakeholders, final negotiations remain rather polarized among policymakers.
SMTAI 2025 Review: Reflecting on a Pragmatic and Forward-looking Industry
10/27/2025 | Marcy LaRont, I-Connect007Leaving the show floor on the final afternoon of SMTA International last week in Rosemont, Illinois, it was clear that the show remains a grounded, technically driven event that delivers a solid program, good networking, and an easy space to commune with industry colleagues and meet with customers.
Come Together: Tom Marktscheffel Used Data to Build CFX and a Global Factory Standard
10/27/2025 | Sandy Gentry, Community MagazineWhen Tom Marktscheffel, director of product management software solutions at ASMPT, looks back on his nearly three decades in electronics manufacturing, one word stands out: data. “Data is the new gold,” he says. Without it, automation, artificial intelligence, and the factory of the future are impossible. With it, the industry can move from manual, error-prone processes to smart, connected systems that make real-time decisions.