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It’s Only Common Sense: OCCAM—the Time Is Now

One of my favorite books is a little tome called Who Moved My Cheese? Even those of you who don’t spend a lot of time reading books have at least heard of it and know that it refers to people, especially in business, who are so stuck in their ways that they get upset when something changes.

In our business, we know this kind of thinking is especially true. In fact, it always makes me laugh when one of my innovative friends finds a new way to do something and is afraid that someone will steal his idea. I always tell him that no one in our business, especially a PCB engineer, has ever thought about someone else’s innovative idea enough to steal it.

I even created a list called “The 50 reasons why it won’t work.” It details all the reasons I have heard over the years why something new and innovative won’t work.

Nesting comes to mind. The idea of building a panel of PCBs with multiple part numbers is something that a number of companies are now doing daily (at great profit, I may add), yet the idea resulted in howls of laughter when first proposed by the “don’t move my cheese” crowd.

Even the very idea of something like the ASAP process, producing boards with sub-one-mil lines, brought even more roars of laughter when it was initially proposed. Now, some companies like American Standard Circuits do it on a daily basis.

This leads to the new (only 17 years old to date) OCCAM technology invented by my dear friend and industry genius Joe Fjelstad. The reason this new 17-year-old technology has not caught on is that it is too big a chunk of cheese moving too far ahead to be accepted.

Now, I’m not very technical, but I will try to explain in my English major way what OCCAM technology actually does. It eliminates solder. That’s it. It eliminates solder from the processes of building and assembling PCBs. Oh, and it builds component assemblies in reverse order with a “components first” approach. Still the same, but different.

So, is it a big deal? Yes, and here’s why:

• First, it will lower the overall costs of materials.
• It will reduce the basic footprint of a PCB factory.
• It will reduce the size and weight of the product.
• It will enhance the assembly process including EMI/ESD protection, reduce problems with moisture, promote heat management and provide a whole new suite of capabilities for product designers to dramatically improve the value of component assemblies moving the industry up the value chain.

Finally, even the most narrow-minded among us have to admit to the benefits of an electronics industry without solders.

As I said earlier, that’s a lot of cheese and a lot of movement. Actually, too much for most people in our industry to swallow. Too many changes at one time. But the thing is this: It can and will work if we have the courage to move forward and put that pretty significant dent in the universe. If not now then later, but that leads me to ask: Why not now? Why not adapt this solution to make the world and our industry a far better place?

I can hear you scurrying to find that list of 50 reasons this won’t work. I bet you are frantically adding another extra 50 reasons why it won’t work. But don’t bother. Over the last 17 years, we have heard about them all and much more. But during that time, we have also found as many reasons as possible why it should, could, and must work. We have heard it all, but we are still here, and we have a mission to move forward to make it work.

At Rice University, on Sept. 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy declared, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

On July 21, 1969, the United States of America landed on the moon.

It’s our turn again. It is time to leave the comfort zone of our own maze and with courage, insight, and passion move our industry to the forefront of innovation. Let’s make that change to improve our own industry and the world as well. Get in touch with me if you want to learn more.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.