Brent A. Fischthal, Sr. Manager, Americas Marketing & Regional Sales, Koh Young America, Inc.

How has Covid-19 affected your business in 2020?

The year 2020 has been a turning point in many ways. In our industry the pandemic had a major impact on the need to accelerate digital transformation in all aspects of business. This is true for our customers, for our partners and for ourselves. In a matter of a few months, we went from a company where many employees were traveling the planet on a weekly basis to sell, install and support our technology to a company that performs the same functions almost 100% remotely.

Has the pandemic affected your business plans for 2021?

The silver lining for Cogiscan is that we already had a strategic plan in place to accelerate our digital transformation. When our customer’s business slowed down, we took this opportunity to invest more time to further accelerate our strategic initiatives. We were fortunate enough to avoid any layoffs and retain our talented and experienced employees. As a matter of fact, we hired several new employees this year. As a result, we are now in great position to help our customers take advantage of the upcoming recovery.

What are your expectations for the electronics assembly industry next year?

We expect that the electronics industry and the world in general will get back to normal gradually in the coming year. Companies can now see the light at the end of the tunnel and they are starting to catch up on investments that were put on hold for the past 9 months. Even after this adjustment we expect to see significantly more investment in smart factory software.