Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: It's Time to Partner

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...I'm told there are only about 250 or so board shops left in North America, down from an estimated high of 1,500 depending on who you ask. The U.S. industry has been devastated in the past 20 years to the point of annihilation. There are many to blame: Our customers and large companies who took our technology to China so they could get their boards built as cheaply as humanly possible. Then there is the U.S. government, which certainly did not do enough to help level the playing field.

What about our own IPC, who sold us out to the contract manufacturers, who were not even around when the IPC was founded? But when the CMs showed up, IPC favored them over us for the sake of the almighty dollar. Lastly, we have ourselves to blame, because for years we have been beating each other’s brains out. North American board shops have turned our competitive environment into a zero-sum game with a few firm winners and many--too many--firm losers.

We've never been an inclusive industry, nor have we been a cooperative one. It's been every man for himself for a long time now. We are such independent operators that we can't even bring ourselves to steal one another’s ideas--no matter how good they are.

We operate in our own vacuums or silos (if we want to use the term of the day) to the point where, if someone else is doing something successful like nesting (putting multi-part numbers on one panel), we come up with all kinds of reasons why this would not work for us.

If we see that someone is marketing their company differently than we are--if we are marketing at all--once again we come up with 50 reasons why it won’t work for our company rather than try to see why it's working and then steal it for ourselves. No one will ever accuse us of stealing good ideas because in our silo environment, we don’t think anyone else has any ideas worth stealing.

We will do anything we can to beat the other guy, to the point where we have just about eliminated the other guy altogether. We're very worried, as we should be, about our own vendor base and their ability to afford to support the few of us left here in North America.

When are we going to get it? When are we going to stop this insanity and start working together? When will we start partnering with one another, sharing our advantages and minimizing our disadvantages?

I know partnering is a dirty word in our lonesome-rider, every-man-for-himself industry. Ours is still a very male-oriented industry. Maybe things would be better if we had more women owners. Women are always more collaborative. Remember how a few months ago even in our do-nothing congress it was the female legislators who got together, formed an ad hoc collaborative initiative, and got things done? Maybe that’s what we need in our industry as well. We certainly need more partnerships in areas from marketing, to sales to technology to innovation and research and development.

If you're a rigid board shop, find a flex board shop to partner with. If you’re a commercial board shop, find yourself a partner who builds military boards, and if you’re a quick-turn prototype shop find yourself a production partner to work with.

Instead of having your very expensive sales team only selling your specific services and technologies, have them sell all services and products through a series of productive partnerships that you take the initiative of developing.

Think about it: Do we keep playing this economic “Darwinistic” game, or do we come together, get stronger, and help one another to not only sustain what we have left in terms of the North American PCB industry, but start growing that industry again?

The old adage "United we stand, divided we fall" has never been more true.

In just six short weeks we'll be meeting in Las Vegas at IPC APEX EXPO. Why don’t you board shop owners take those six weeks to get in touch with some of your potential partners and set up meetings while you’re in the same place at the same time? Get together, talk things over, and figure out how to help each other. I promise you it'll be a game changer. What are you waiting for? Give collaboration a try. It’s only common sense.