K&S and Assembléon: A Perfect Marriage of Technology and Services

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

Barry Matties: Do you think your competitors are taking that same path, though?

Chong: I think a lot of them are moving towards a very similar paradigm.

Matties: What sets you apart then if you are both doing that?

Chong: We are very focused on our core, which is advanced interconnect. Two wires are connected, and something needs to be placed on the pad. In that space, we are niche and we stay focused. We are not going into, for example, an oven or something completely different from our core business. In terms of wire bonding and advanced interconnect; we believe we are the leader. We will continue to find and expand the space as we continue to grow.

We are not jumping into a completely different league like wafer or something in the front-end. I think it’s about expanding the space in the core, and we will look for spaces where we will continue to grow and build solutions.

Matties: In terms of the equipment, what’s the gating factor? Is it speed for your customers? What do they really look for when they are looking at equipment?

Chong: From an industrial point, it’s always what I call a high level thing, which is Moore’s Law. Doubling transistors and basically trying to improve your productivity. They want to pack in more things in a smaller form factor. They want their machines to be placing more accurately because the transistors are smaller, and the package is smaller. The next thing they’re driving for is efficiency improvement, which is what we call cost-of-ownership. It comes down to speed, uptime, availability of your machines and so forth.

In all areas of our products, we have a common theme to drive the efficiency, but at the same time, maintaining that few microns of accuracy. We will need to continue to look for opportunities for efficiency improvement. This is the same theme across the entire supply chain of electronics. As long as Moore’s Law is in place, I don’t think anybody is going to just walk away from that paradigm.

Matties: Well it sounds like you guys have made a nice marriage here.

Chong: I think the integration between K&S and Assembléon is a good thing. We see a lot of opportunities; instead of going in as two companies trying to sell a solution, now we are ONE K&S offering a combined solution, and because of the synergies, we could even offer more ideas about how we could innovate and bring better solutions to our customers.

At the end of the day, they like to talk to one guy who can bring an end-to-end solution. I think this is a perfect marriage of the two companies and we anticipate a lot more of opportunities for growth and cross synergies together as One K&S.

Matties: How was the cultural merge between the two companies? That's always a tough challenge in the acquisition process.

de Groot: I think it worked out very well. Looking at our customers, they are global. We’ve had a strong history within Philips, a global company, and have been doing business with them over 20 years internationally. Everybody, of course, has been cross trained with all the organizations. It was very seamless. Adding to what Chan Pin has just mentioned, looking at competencies, especially from a technology point of view, the base is the core. In all our machines, there is something unique from a technology point of view where we do things a little bit differently compared to competitors, which gives customers a clear advantage. That philosophy of being able to sell and explain it to customers, and having customers value that, is also something that binds us.

As a team we were together at one of the shows this year where a lot of people met each other for the first time. After five minutes, shoulder to shoulder, everybody was selling each other's machines through the other. It was great to see. Because we get questions about wedge bonding and they get questions on pick-and-place, and it worked out very well and very fast.

Matties: When a customer comes to you, what sort of demands do they put on you in terms of equipment or process or delivery times?

de Groot: Even if we do the job perfectly well, they are always looking for more, of course. With our type of equipment, you become part of the supply chain. If you have to order spare parts, you’re part of their system. The people have to be trained. It’s more than just delivering a machine. We’re delivering a process, a service and we become a crucial part of their operations. If our machine is down, their operations could be down because it can be quite crucial.

In terms of response time, and in terms of understanding what the customer wants and being proactive on processes, our service engineers  will service the  equipment for customers, regardless if it’s K&S’s, because we value the customer and they’re important to us. Our focus is on our customer, our customer's process, and we always do more than just selling them a machine. The solution is not only a piece of equipment. It doesn't work like that.

Matties: It’s really about the people that they do business with. You guys have been around for 60 years at K&S and now with Assembléon you have a lot of talent and knowledge that you bring to the market. Congratulations. This sounds like a good marriage and it looks like you are making it successful. Thank you for your time today.

de Groot: Thank you very much.

Chong: Thank you.

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