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The Shaughnessy Report: Developing a Strategy

If you’re around my age, you probably spent much of the 1970s playing board games such as Monopoly, Life and Scrabble. But I really enjoyed playing Stratego, which required that you plan a strategy to defeat the other players.

PCB fabricators of today are in the same boat now, but it’s no game. They face a variety of market and supply chain obstacles in addition to competitors down the street and overseas. With profit margins tight enough to squeak, fabricators need a solid business strategy.

But how does a leader plan a strategy? In a field of competitors offering basically the same services, how can your company differentiate itself? Will you be a cost leader, or focus on serving a niche market such as medical or defense? As we learn in this issue, one question that successful leaders need to ask themselves is, “What do I not want my company to be?”

In this month's issue of PCB007 Magazine, we asked some of the top leaders in the industry, and some of the top business strategy “gurus” in the world, to share their thoughts on developing strategies.

We start with an in-depth look at SEL’s new captive facility in Idaho, featuring interviews with CEO David Whitehead, Engineering Director John Hendrickson, and Mike Brask, president of IPS which provided an ENIG line for the new facility. We have an interview with TTM CEO Tom Edman, who shares some of the strategy development ideas that have made his company one of the biggest fabricators in North America. IPC’s John Mitchell discusses one critical component of your strategy: developing the right team. We have an interview with Carsten Sundin, president and CEO of Stratos Aircraft, and his engineers, who break down their long-term strategy for bringing a new jet to market.

Next, we have an interview with Dr. Tim Rodgers of the University of Colorado, who lays out each step of a manufacturer’s development strategy, including identifying what exactly constitutes a good strategy. Columnist Dan Beaulieu loves to make lists, and this month he points out 10 steps to making your manufacturing operation outstanding. And Christopher Chapman, publisher of The Digestible Deming newsletter, discusses what today’s fabricators can learn from the work of W. Edwards Deming.

It's hard to believe that summer is almost over. Before you know it, we’ll be in trade show season again. See you next month.

This column originally appears in the August 2023 issue of PCB007 Magazine.