Peter Tallian, COO, BTU International, Inc.

By many important measures, 2014 was the best year in STI Electronics' 32 year history. I am very much looking forward to 2015 being better. Our training services, which includes IPC training and certification as well as high temperature and many other programs, continues to broaden and our Alabama, Indiana, and Texas training centers are all poised to grow and expand.

We have the best team of instructors in the industry and I expect to continue adding to that team as we find the appropriate applicants.

I also expect for a curriculum development staff to produce more training programs which will include some used by the entire industry, some used by specific companies or organizations, and some as unique STI offerings. We sell training materials all over the world directly and through strategic distributors and those offerings will increase as new programs are added and new requirements are discovered.

Our failure analysis lab is poised to grow as every month we are adding satisfied customers from around the world. Our largest growth over the past several years has been in our contract manufacturing area and I fully expect that to be the case in 2015.

Every time we have added a talented person or a piece of equipment, we have added capabilities that immediately begin to be used to make us stronger, larger, and more importantly better at meeting or exceeding our customer's needs. The signs I see suggest a relatively strong 2015 for our industry although I only wish I was smart enough to know that would be the case. Barring some unforeseen event, I am confident that STI will have a very good year.