Mike Dube, Executive Vice President of Manufacturing Operations & Engineering, Rochester Electronics

We look forward to 2025 as a year of both challenges and opportunities. Supply chain conditions have improved overall. There are some commodities with tightening availability and the semiconductor industry is not expanding capacity. The damage caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton will translate to demand spikes across multiple industries as reimbursements enable replacement purchases.

While that is a welcome opportunity to an EMS industry seeing flattening in the economy in 2024, it may exacerbate component availability issues. The priority changes of a new Administration in D.C. will also have implications on demand patterns. We are well positioned to support demand increases, and our supply chain management team and software tools should enable us to address any material challenges along the way.

Internally, we've been working on incorporating Lean Six Sigma philosophy and tools, and automating production processes as much as possible, which helps in varying demand environments. For example, we’ve progressed from using machine learning in implementing Industry 4.0 capabilities in our SMT lines to incorporating higher level AI capabilities in our inspection programming.

Overall, we think 2025 will see some economic upturn and we are well positioned to support that with our North American and Asian facilities.