Markus Wilkens, President, ASYS Group Americas Inc.

For more than 30 years, MicroCare has focused on a consistent message: environmentally-progressive cleaning at the lowest possible cost per-part-cleaned. That's message will be enhanced in 2018.

Environmental issues are clearly an issue for our customers, because we're getting calls from around the world about global warming, VOCs, halogens, and worker safety and so on, but cost-control is a key factor as well. In response, we're kicking into high gear. First, our Cleaning Lab is growing in staff and capabilities and becoming even more useful to clients. We have revamped our web site with more rich content about critical cleaning.

We're producing a new video about critical cleaning every 60 days. We'll be presenting more additional, original research about critical cleaning at industry forums. Plus, all of this will be backed up by more highly-experienced sales people around the globe, being supported by three manufacturing locations and three logistics centers. It's a fun time to be at MicroCare.

New products are the heart-and-soul of the MicroCare message. Over the past thirty years we have completely rebuilt our product line four different times, so we're good at this. For example, today global warming is a huge issue, so in the past 3-4 years we have begun migrating to new chemistries with the best possible GWP ratings.

We're introducing new fiber optic cleaners, new vapor degreasing fluids, new specialty packaging and many new products for cleaning on the benchtop. We also take a holistic view of the cleaning process: it's not just the price of a liter of cleaning fluid, but also the floor space, electrical, logistics, engineering and maintenance support, and all the other factors of a cleaning environment that can drive costs up or down. With our new products we'll be leading the industry to help companies protect their people, the planet and their budget.

We think the future is bright, super-bright in fact. There are a number of trends driving end-users to more capable electronic systems because there are no answers to the world's problems that do not include lots of PCBs.

Driving this conclusion is the need to be connected all the time, anywhere, even in today's ultra-mobile world; the need to move, manage and preserve more video and data (home security systems and personal health come to mind); the burgeoning demand for energy efficiency which is putting renewable energy sources across the globe; the pressure to use natural resources more cleverly (like water and fisheries); and lastly the growing interconnectedness of all things.

Plus the global population is aging, so employee productivity is going to have to climb if GDPs are to be sustained. Mix all these trends together and we're looking at a smarter, more digital, more connected, greener and more peaceful planet -- what's not to like about that?