Interview

It will be under the sign of the tiger and, according to the stars, it should be one of spontaneity, novelty and the granting of secret wishes. For people working in manufacturing, however, the arrival of the Chinese New Year, which in the calendar fluctuates between 21 January and 20 February, marks an absolutely crucial milestone in the season. It is often here that it is decided whether and how successful the following year will be. In fact, the Chinese New Year is also associated with the term 'Chunyun', when people travel en masse to see their families and fifteen days of celebrations break out across the country. For two weeks, most Chinese factories are unable to produce anything, and all orders go back to Europe, at least for a while.

Is the time approaching when printed circuit board manufacturing will start to return to Europe? What role can automation play in this? Why is there a lack of 'brains' in the Czech market? And how to find them? How hard is it to saddle a three-headed corporate horse - Gatema - that simultaneously handles PCB manufacturing, information systems development and implementation, and an international telemedicine startup project? We also discussed this with Stanislav Sýkora, former CEO of Asseco Solutions and for the last four years CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Gatema. He is also an experienced coach and mentor.

The public in the Czechia first became aware of BTL Healthcare Technologies at the turn of last year. This was when the owner of the BTL group, Jan Vild, together with the technical director, Tomáš Drbal, became the largest private donors of lung ventilators in our country. They donated three hundred devices worth a total of €1.2 million to hospitals. In addition, they sent one hundred thousand respirators to hospitals and another twenty-five thousand to homes for the elderly

Dennis Hausner lives in Baden-Württemberg, near the French and Swiss borders. Yet he is now in his second year working for a Czech company. Specifically, since January 2020, when the well-known German PCB manufacturer Kubatronik was bought by the Czech company Gatema. We took advantage of his visit to Boskovice to find out how the whole process of mutual cooperation takes place in the difficult times of coronavirus and raw material crisis; and how difficult it is to succeed in the PCB industry on the European market today.

Board quality control is a world in which an incredible number of abbreviations appear. There are standards and certifications such as IPC 1, IPC 2, IPC 3, ISO 9000, ISO 14001, CMI 700 and CMI 900 devices, CoC reports, RoHS, and UL certification. Nevertheless, a human is still the decisive variable in the whole process. Ordinary interpersonal communication that solves possible problems and shortcomings. And, at the same time, the error of the human factor, which is by far the most common cause of possible complications. Jaroslava Sedláčková from Gatema PCB, who has been dealing with the quality of the output of manufactured printed circuit boards for twelve years and is also in charge of communication with customers in the event of any complaints, also knows this well. “Every customer is different. Some are accommodating, others are negative. For some, it is enough that the board meets one of the standards, others insist on a number of details. For us, the only real standard is the customer, or rather his satisfaction”, she says at the beginning of the interview.