Trends

Andreas Kader has been through a lot with printed circuit boards. Consider for yourself. Project manager at AT&S, sales manager at Robust Electronics, head of sales and member of the managing board at Fuchsberger PCB & Electronics. All respected giants, established Austrian brands with a worldwide presence. And more than fifteen years of experience in how to sell, and then above all deliver, the perfect PCB to clients.

They say the world is a global village in which everything is related to everything. I’ll give you a common example. It is not customary for the main news channels to address the area of chip or PCB production. But there's no other way: each of us who has been used to ordering anything online in recent years and receiving everything on time suddenly has to deal with delays. Sometimes it is a few days, sometimes - months. As befits the global village, there are many reasons for it. We also talked about it with Radim Vítek and Ondřej Horký from Gatema PCB. One of the few manufacturers of printed circuit boards, which, thanks to its focus, has not yet had to fundamentally change delivery dates.

We have already written about MGM Compro at PCB Master. A company that grew out of the so-called “Slušovice miracle” in the early 1990s, and today delivers sophisticated solutions to the most demanding clients in the field of aerospace, from Zlín. This time we will look at the story from a slightly different angle. From the one that might interest the reader even more. From the point of view of printed circuit boards. A good reason to interview Grigori "Griša" Dvorský - the spiritual father of the company who is still considered a key innovator and bearer of corporate know-how. And Jakub Henčl - a young "go-getter" who holds the position of the Chief Operation Officer and takes care of the operation and processes in the company.

The PCB redesign is a complex process involving verification of existing production documentation, transformation of documentation into a new development environment, verification of the availability of all components, modification of diagrams and layout, and verification of a new design. The most common reason for redesign is the poor availability of some components. The required component may be temporarily or permanently unavailable. There may also be situations when the end of production of a given component is approaching (NRND, Not recommended for new design or EOL, End of Life). The unavailability of integrated circuits has been encountered quite often lately. As a result of the pandemic, many electronic component manufacturers were forced to reduce their production capacity.

One of the most fundamental trends that production automation should bring will include the return of production to Europe or North America. Why? Because the most expensive part of production today are "man-hours". If there will be fewer skilled regular workers and, on the contrary, more expert and creative people globally who have to be paid well, the natural cost of logistics from one end of the planet to the other and the “price” in the form of the time delay caused by this transportation will become one of the most fundamental variables in the entire production process.