Driving Operational Efficiencies at Summit Interconnect

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

As the largest privately held printed circuit board manufacturer in North America, with headquarters in Irvine, California, Summit Interconnect has eight facilities, including one assembly shop. Coming back into the industry after a career move that took him to Amazon, Summit COO Sean Patterson reflects on the issues of culture, the new workforce and PCB capacity issues in the United States, to name just a few.

Barry Matties: As chief operating officer for Summit Interconnect, what's a typical day like for you?

Sean Patterson: My day starts with checking in on the day's production, working with sales on upcoming quotes from a customer perspective, and then getting into larger projects for the rest of the day with an eye toward our long-term vision. Overall, I’m looking at our operations from the day before as well as trends from the prior weeks for all our eight facilities. Seven are fabrication facilities and one is a quick-turn assembly shop. 

Matties: You have made some acquisitions, the most recent being Royal Circuits in Hollister, California. Is that right?

Patterson: Yes, there was Royal Circuits in Hollister, Advanced Assembly in Denver, and South Coast Circuits in Santa Ana, California.

Matties: You're operating in California, perhaps one of the most expensive states to do business. What’s your strategy for offsetting costs?

Patterson: We focus on efficiency and verifying our processes up front before we start production. This maximizes our workforce to keep labor costs down. We also focus on employee retention by providing long term career planning with opportunities to move into higher level engineering positions. 

Matties: How do you help your employees take advantage of paid training?

Patterson: At IPC this year, of the 20 people who went through the Emerging Engineering program, eight were from Summit, so we had the largest team there. It's healthy that we all cooperate to bring more people into the industry and not just move them from site to site. That's not helping our industry. We want to continue that IPC training, developing a career path throughout our company and within the industry.

To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the January 2024 issue of PCB007 Magazine, click here.