Freedom CAD Ready for Future With New Leadership

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

During PCB East, I caught up with our friend Scott Miller of Freedom CAD. Scott has been chief operating officer of the company for quite a while, but he recently assumed a new title as new, younger managers moved up into top leadership positions. I asked Scott to discuss his new role, as well as the company’s move to keep looking at the industry in novel, fresh ways.

Andy Shaughnessy: Scott, I understand you have a new title, chief customer officer. What exactly does that entail?

Scott Miller: I'm transitioning out of the COO role into the chief customer officer role because of my relationships in the customer world. We just recognized that if we're going to continue to grow, we have to rejuvenize the business with youth. Our company is now 21 years old, and the senior leadership of the company is all maturing. So, for the past year or so, we’ve been restaffing. We’ve promoted Brian White to CEO and Pat White to COO.  They are the sons of the founders of Freedom CAD, Lou and Lauren Primmer, and they've really stepped into their roles and are now leading the organization.

Shaughnessy: I met Brian and Pat in your booth, and I bet they’re about half my age.

Miller: Yes, they are young. We just need to adapt and figure out how to do things in a new way. They bring a whole new perspective to marketing, and to where the business direction needs to be so we don’t get stale. This is something we've been planning to do. We've groomed Brian and Pat over the years to embrace these responsibilities. Now I get to spend all of my time being customer-focused.

Shaughnessy: And that's what you like doing anyway, right?

Miller: Exactly. I enjoy working with customers.

Shaughnessy: That's great. Switching gears, what do you see going on in the industry right now? What are your challenges and your customers’ challenges?

Miller: It's an interesting time. Business is still strong, but we do see things slowing down a bit, which is not unexpected. We traditionally provide overflow support for our customers. As a design service bureau, we end up filling the gaps on the way up, and we step aside on the way down when business retrenches. Things are slowing a little bit, but we've been through this many times. Companies resize, people retire, there are reorgs, and then the business comes back. The next thing you know, they don't have enough capacity and they're knocking on our door again. So, we're holding our own. I wouldn't say that we're slow, but we're not busting at the seams.

Shaughnessy: In your position, you all are the first ones to see a slowdown or boom in business.  

Miller: That’s right. We live it. And from a technology standpoint, it's always about smaller and denser. Managing power is very important. We're doing signal integrity on more projects, and power can affect signal performance with voltage shifts. We're doing thermal analysis because components are driving more power and we want to understand what's going on in the systems.

Our business has always been driven by complexity. We take on the tough stuff, so we see a lot of technology early and we have to figure out how to adapt to it. We're seeing some HDI, and some customers are talking about additive processes. We continue to educate ourselves so that we can be not just a service, but also a valuable resource for our customers. We always want to do more than just connect the dots.

And we're all challenged by the fact that this is a graying industry. There are a lot of maturing engineers and designers, and it's hard to find talented, young designers. We've established a program to bring in and train new designers. We’ve been very successful at doing that, maybe too successful [laughs]! Some of our best design trainees have turned into FAEs for EDA companies. Sometimes you pay the price of doing a good job.

Shaughnessy: Even if they leave, at least they’re educated and not out spreading misinformation.

Miller: That’s right. We’re good for the industry.

Shaughnessy: Are you watching any other new technologies?

Miller: We're keeping an eye on AI. A lot of the presentations at PCB East have been focused on AI. It’s clear that machine learning and AI are going to impact printed circuit board design, whether it's through interactive autorouting or some form of streamlining the process. So as a company, we are trying to make sure that we're aware of what's emerging and we're staying in pace with it. It seems like there's a big drive to the cloud and cloud designs, as well as how all of that is going to be managed. It'll be interesting to see.

A big part of AI is that it has to learn from data, right? And in our industry, the components change so fast. The technology changes constantly, and I think it’s going to be tough for the AI architecture to keep up. It's one thing for AI to write an article, but it's a whole different thing to design a schematic or a PCB. We’re a mature industry now, and the technology leaps aren't as dramatic as they used to be. But AI looks like it could have a dramatic effect.

Shaughnessy: Anything else you’d like to add?

Miller: I think we're well-positioned for the future as we monitor the evolving landscape and keep our design team well-trained.

Shaughnessy: Sounds good, Scott. Thanks for speaking with me.

Miller: Anytime, Andy.  

Scott Miller is the author of The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to Executing Complex PCBs, available for free download. Audio book also available.