Dave Raby, President and CEO, STI Electronics Inc.
Dave Raby, President and CEO, STI Electronics Inc.
The current economic conditions have been difficult, but as leaders of the industry, your comments can provide valuable insight. Will you be expanding to new markets, or introducing new products next year? What are your expectations for the industry in 2009?
I wish I were smart enough to know what the economy and our industry were going to do but what I do know is STI Electronics is growing and we plan to continue that trend. 2008 was the best of our 26 years in business as we adapted to the changing world.
Some sectors (defense and medical) of our industry grew and we worked hard to increase our presence in those areas. Some areas (consumer and automotive) contracted and we worked hard to increase our market share and relationships with customers so that we are poised to grow when they do whether — it is in 2009 or beyond.
We’ve moved into a new facility that is more than three times the size of our old one to ensure we have room to grow.
STI is unique in being basically three companies in one. Our Training Services Department continues to add the highest quality of instructors to our staff. For 2009, we are enlarging our two fully equipped classrooms while also adding a third. We also will be teaching more classes away from our Madison facility. We’ll continue to supply all the materials to support customer’s internal training programs as well as the dummy components to train on and calibrate new production equipment.
Our Distribution Department continues to sell assembly products from more than 100 different manufacturers. In the 4th quarter of 2008, we added a new segment to the department as we began offering industrial equipment and supplies. We look forward to the new markets these products put us in and hope to benefit from the new growth as well as the diversification.
Our Engineering Services Department has been our area of huge growth in 2008 and I look for the same in 2009. We’ve added a second full SMT line to greatly increase our capabilities for prototypes and small- and medium-volume production. We’ve greatly increased the size and capabilities of our analytical and failure analysis labs.
In 2008, our customers have led us into more counterfeit part detection and more reballing of lead-free BGAs. We expect to venture further in these subjects in 2009 as well as new ones. We plan to offer more manufacturing audits and gap analysis in the coming year as almost everyone is looking for areas where they can improve their processes.
Our patented IC/DT technology (imbedded bare die) continues to be praised as a major breakthrough in building smaller, lighter and more reliable assemblies that can handle very harsh environments. I hope to see some major projects using the technology in 2009. To facilitate building IC/DT, we have built a new cleanroom that allows us to work with bare die but also gives us capabilities to fulfill special customer needs for both prototype and production.
I know many smart people are predicting doom and gloom for 2009, and there are a lot of reasons to believe they may be correct. At STI, we are doing our best to position ourselves to gain market share regardless of the overall economy and we believe we will. Ask me in a year how we did.
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Last November I accepted a position to lead a mature, profitable, and small EMS company to the next level in its evolution. After 28 years in the industry, I still feel energized and confident in the future. At Circuitronics, we have recently added capital, hired senior employees, purchased a new ERP system, and adopted ... 
So far, we have no reason for pessimism at Creyr Innovation. As a matter of fact, we see cautious optimism with almost all of our customer's forecasts. A very different and pleasant outlook from what we saw going into 2009. However, the business climate is tougher than ever. We can only hope that investors will allow companies to bolster their infrastructure and product portfolio ... 
The actions needed to prepare for 2010, and the much anticipated upturn, were taken in 2009. These included improving lines of communication with customers and channel responsiveness. Experience shows that agility is essential in an upturn. Manufacturers tend to ramp up faster than they scaled down, and they typically want even greater value. Which is why we also took the initiative to invest in our core printer platforms ... 
2010 promises to be a strong year with respect to next generation packaging solutions for small form factor electronics systems as a result of prior years development efforts. With the improving economy, semiconductor companies are showing positive returns and are beginning to turn on the capital funding faucet once again. Military and Homeland Defense budgets are defined and beginning to solidify ... 
The first few months of the New Year will be slower than we'd like but much better than it has been. Consumer confidence in the economy is still very negative and the high unemployment rate has most everyone afraid to spend money keeping any manufacturing expansion to the minimum. Machine sales will increase but production capacity will not. New capital equipment purchases will be mainly niche markets, equipment ... 