Catching up with Winonics’ Mark Eazell

I have always thought of Winonics as one of the hidden gems of the North American PCB industry. Their well-equipped and well-laid-out facility in Brea, California is one of the more impressive looking PCB facilities in North America today. Winonics is one of three PCB companies owned by JR Controls, the other two being Cosmotronic […]

Book Recommendation – Driven By Difference: How Great Companies Fuel Innovation through Diversity

A book recommendation from Dan Beaulieu: Driven By Difference: How Great Companies Fuel Innovation through Diversity By David Livermore Copyright 2016 Amacom Books Price: $27.95: 276 pages with appendix and index This book makes sense Diversity is a key to innovation in fact I strongly believe as many other well-minded people that diversity has always […]

How to Compete with the Chinese…Don’t

Just do what they can’t do instead While talking to a friend of mine the other day our talk turned to how American Printed Circuit Board shops can compete against the Chinese and other Asian board fabricators. After an extended exchange he turned to me and said. “It’s very simple Dan, the best way to […]

TAA has $75K waiting for you

You’ve got to take a risk The great Hockey star Wayne Gretzky once famously said, “I never scored on a shot I didn’t take” and of course nothing has ever been truer. The greatest hitters in baseball fail over 60% of the time. Golfers who do not go for it, do not take a stab […]

So Long To The World’s Greatest PCB Design Salesman

Mike Wilson passes away My great friend and business associate Mike Wilson passed away this week after a short illness. And now the world will be a little less interesting without Mike around. For the twenty five plus years I knew Mike, he was always up to something. Even in the past few years, two […]

Tales From The PCB Front: A True Story

The young sales person had been waiting patiently for the buyer to come out for almost an hour. He was a bit nervous and also excited because he was finally here. It had taken him literally months to get here. He had worked very hard with prospecting and research and cold calling and leaving messages […]

Catching up with Sunrise Electronics’ Ashok and Jigar Patel

Located in the heart of Chicagoland’s PCB center in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, Sunrise Electronics builds some of the most sophisticated PCB products in the industry—and they build them fast. From 2-mil lines and spaces to sub 3-mil holes, to boards with special materials and metal-backed boards, this father and son, Ashok and Jigar, and […]

PCB Reps Need Retainers

Yup that’s right you heard me. The age of reps working months and months on their own dime before they see a cent from their principals is over. We have finally come to this. Reps are now going to need some sort of compensation before they will even think of signing on with a new […]