Catching up with Cosmotronic’s Gary Abel

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Abel: Well yes, you have to be careful which ones you choose. You have to pick the ones you believe you can be successful at. After that, it depends on the customer. The customer has to have an understanding and an appreciation of what you are trying to do for them. The customer also has to be willing to be flexible and want to work with you as well and, at times, share in the cost. Establishing a mutual respect for each other, a partnership, then we can go forward collaborating with the customer, making the customer feel comfortable that we know what we are doing. If and when we suggest a change in the design, they will be open to working with us on it.

Beaulieu: But you can’t take all of the projects, right.

Abel: We reserve about 10% of our capacity for R&D type projects.

Beaulieu: How do you get them done? Do you use a team effort or what?

Abel: Yes, I am so glad you asked that, because that is exactly how we do it. Not only R&D projects but just about everything we do in the shop. Everyone takes part, everyone is cross-trained so that they can handle a number of operations and everyone in the shop is responsible for what they produce. I firmly believe in the team philosophy and that’s what we apply here at Cosmotronic, whether we are building our production rigid-flex boards or developing technologies for tomorrow, it is the way we operate.

Beaulieu: Gary, I know that you are one of three divisions—three board shops owned by one company. Can you talk about that?

Abel: Our sister divisions are Winonics, where we do high-end commercial products including fine line, blind and buried via type work and then Bench 2 Bench, where we build some of the highest technology flex boards in the world, including producing boards with sub 1.3 mil lines. Together, the three shops form some of the most impressive technology-capable companies in the country, if not the world. We like to say that we are the biggest small companies in the industry. We have all the technology of a very large company with the flexibility and ease of doing business of a small company. If one shop can’t do something another one can; we always help each other out that way and that’s what makes our customers love working with us.

Beaulieu: On that note we’ll wrap this up. Gary, thanks so much for discussing Cosmotronic. I think readers are really going to enjoy learning more about your company.

Abel: No problem, Dan. As I said earlier, I love talking PCBs and I love talking about Cosmotronic.

Dan Beaulieu is a 30-year PCB industry veteran, and sales and marketing expert and writer who has contributed to numerous industry publications, on topics ranging from sales and marketing to board shop performance. Beaulieu may be reached at danbbeaulieu@aol.com.

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