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Nolan’s Notes: Wire Harness—The Underdog of the Industry

My dad’s favorite cartoon character was “Underdog,” one of the very first American Saturday morning cartoon shows. When someone asked him for help, Underdog would proudly declare, “Never Fear! Underdog is here!” Over time, I learned that “underdog” had a wider, more socially poignant meaning than just the name of a cartoon superhero.

Like so many of us, I developed a love for a real-life underdog, that “come from behind and leapfrog everyone else” disruption to the status quo that’s quite fun to study or watch if you’re lucky enough to be close to one in real time. Some of my favorite examples include Oprah Winfrey, who built her influence by being credible and focused on personal stories, and Ingvar Kamprad, the Swedish entrepreneur who founded IKEA. A key part of his winning formula came from his dyslexia, which constrained how his products were designed, packaged, and distributed.

There are so many others, of course. I think of Ray Kroc, a middle-aged milkshake machine salesman who built the McDonald’s empire on an optimized bill of materials and disciplined assembly. I also love the stories of Soichiro Honda, who treated failure as data, not identity, and Sam Walton, who built the Walmart empire by first targeting underserved small towns often considered “unprofitable.” He sure proved them wrong.

These stories about underdogs kept coming to mind while working on this issue about the challenges facing the wire harness industry. The product is not exactly glamorous and is often treated as an afterthought, but it is most certainly critical to the system.

Wire harness shops have been overlooked when it comes to software or automation tools because they haven’t been profitable enough for the innovative software folks. But that seems to be changing, and as it does, so do the business operations at a wire harness shop.

When smart quoting software can give wire harness shops a 5x increase in quoting pace, it allows for quoting riskier jobs, winning more business, and bootstrapping the company into larger scales. Other tools that automate the shop floor help increase disciplined replication even as production throughput increases. This means that a shop has more latitude to try something new and risk failure if there’s a lesson or skill to be learned from the experience.

To address this issue, we hosted a roundtable with members of the Innovation Advisory Team of the Wire Harness Manufacturer’s Association (WHMA) to discuss how wire harnesses are moving into the digital twin era. Two key software suppliers are delivering on the team's vision: Cableteque specializes in automating job quoting, and Zuken brings its CAD tool expertise to wire harness design. We pivot the conversation from supplier to customer, featuring an article by tech writer Joanne Harris, who speaks at length with Steve Pilipchuk about his frontline challenges and solutions in the wire harness business. Lorena Villanueva, senior director of the Global Electronics Association’s Mexico operations, posts a dispatch from a recent wire harness working session in Las Vegas, where even the moderating styles are changing to meet the times.

This month’s columnists include Jennie Hwang, who continues her series on AI, Brian Buyea talks about thermal management, and Josh Casper takes us on a journey of a component through an SMT factory. We also include some photos from the recently concluded APEX EXPO, and I’m working on APEX EXPO reporting for the May issue of SMT007 Magazine as well.

Still not convinced wire harnesses are a critical part of the overall system? Check out this article¹ where Ford CEO Jim Farley recounts a critical lesson he learned from a Tesla teardown, discovering the Ford Mustang Mach-E wire harnesses used 1.5 kilometers more copper wire than the Tesla Model 3, adding weight and cost to the Mustang. Keep this in mind as you read the opening roundtable.

References

“Ford Learns Tough EV Lessons from Tesla and China,” by Georgia Collins, Manufacturing Digital, Nov. 17. 2025.

This column originally appeared in the April 2026 issue of SMT007 Magazine.