The PC Systems Blog

Labor Day has come and gone which symbolizes the end of summer for most of us.  The end of summer and beginning of fall is typically a rather busy time at PCS, especially for the Engineering and Product Management departments as inquiries seem to pick up.  This is often a very exciting time for all of us.  I attribute this influx of inquiries on the fact that it seems everyone except me has enough vacation saved up to take every Friday off during the summer, although I know this isn’t true.  I do know that it is much easier to pull a meeting together after Labor Day and get all the stakeholders to make decisions much faster.  Perhaps this is why it seems projects seem to move faster through Q4/Q1, but also it could be due to the fact  that groups are trying to use their annual budget before they lose it?  Either way, it is good for PCS!

As we move into the fourth quarter of the year, we are hoping to start ‘”blogging” more often here at PCS to continue the dialogue with you, our customer.  We hope that we can invigorate you and encourage you to leave more comments.

We will be looking for guest bloggers to share some industry and product insight and hopefully getting some more involvement out of the internal group.  Also, we have been working with the developers of our website to include some videos of our manufacturing space and also outline our strategy for our website.  That is where you come in.

We are thinking that our site should read less like a product catalogue and more like an information source for readers with design control of their product.  Would that work for you?  Since you are taking the time to read through this blog, perhaps you would like to share what you feel the most important content could be for our site? 

I am not a strong proponent of bragging about accomplishments, but we recently had a success here at PC Systems that I would really like to share with you.

Not long ago, we received a call from a customer who knew what they needed an interconnect to do, but had no real idea on how to do it. They were pointed to our website via a colleague, saw a picture of a part they thought would work (it was a past prototype), and they gave us a call.

After a 10 minute conversation on the phone they asked if they could come to our facility. Our response was of course as we started to talk about our schedule for the next few weeks, but they promptly told us they would be there first thing in the morning. We immediately scrambled, creating prototypes and discussing design options.

The customer arrived around 10AM the next morning and we immediately went to the conference room. Within an hour we had a whiteboard drawing of an assembly. It would consist of 2 simple harnesses to be run on our automated leadmaker and one custom overmolded assembly. I won’t get into detail other than to say it was an injection overmold, with two custom components. We discussed project timing and quickly realized we were behind schedule. The customer needed final parts in 8 weeks. This would include designing the custom components, bringing a new supplier on board for one of the custom components (in Europe) and design and manufacture of a injection mold tool. We committed and the customer left for home. I am sure they had an uneasy feeling regarding how we would meet their timing.

By the end of the day we had formal drawings and within 3 days we had signoff from the customer’s customer (OEM). We did this by interacting directly with the customer’s customer for signoff, copying our customer, in an effort to eliminate delay from a middle man.

Now it was time for our supply chain to show us what they could do. Please keep in mind this was a very small order in the context of what our suppliers normally produce. We pride ourselves in developing partnerships with our suppliers where size of the order doesn’t dictate priority. They delivered.

I also want to say that our tool shop is a class act. Capitalizing on the decrease in powdered metal industry in our area, we have found a very competent shop with top of the line equipment who can produce tooling at a reasonable cost and provide true value for our customers. They helped alleviate some of our time constraint by providing design insight as our Engineering staff developed drawings for the part and tooling.

We were able to get our custom component manufacturers online very quickly and to make a long story short, we made our deadline. We ship the parts today.

We shipped custom overmolded parts in 8 weeks at no other customer’s expense. We did it without charging a single expedite fee and without cutting a single corner. All the credit in the world goes to our supply chain and the staff at PC Systems that supports them. Also, to the customer, who was responsive when they needed to be, and also hands off when they needed to be.

Are we proud? Absolutely. Are we surprised? Absolutely not. Here at PC Systems, every customer is truly important to us. We cannot afford to put anyone on the back burner because they are a small account or do not represent high growth potential.

If you are a consumer of electrical interconnects, I challenge you to let us solve your next design problem. If you want to know more about PC Systems and what we do, please take a look at our website here: http://www.pcsridgway.com/

“A digital native is a person whom digital technologies already existed when they were born…” per Wikipedia.

Yesterday, three representatives from PC Systems, Inc. attended an Innovation Roadmapping Workshop facilitated by Dr. Irene Petrick. She described digital natives as anyone born after 1980. You may ask, ‘”What does a generation of people have to do with engineering or electrical interconnects?”, which is the same question we asked.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I personally am a “digital native”.

In the next five years, individuals such as myself will begin to take larger roles in organizations. We, the digital natives, will become the decision makers. This means that the manner in which product is designed and purchased will likely see a dynamic change.

We, the digital natives, use technology in very different ways than the past generation. A couple examples:
1) I prefer email over using the phone for communication. This is a major point of contention between our Product Manager and myself. My reasoning is that I am always multi-tasking. Anyone who multi-tasks knows that it is impossible. The brain can only focus on one thing at once, therefore multi-tasking is really just jumping from job to job to job very quickly. The consequence of this is I often forget what is communicated over the telephone three months after the fact. A written log of a conversation to me is more efficient because the intent is to not rehash the same conversation over again every time the topic comes up. Did I mention that digital natives think the world revolves around them?
2) Simply stated, ask a digital native to send a fax. If they are like me they will look at you dumbfounded. Why send a fax when you can scan the document, email it, and then have electronic copy and documented history? After going through this scenario with our Purchasing Manager I now understand some people are actually more comfortable receiving a fax, but I still don’t understand why. I probably never will. Did I mention that digital natives think the world revolves around them?

There are countless examples of how digital natives are different that past generations. I am sure you can think of a couple yourself and I would love to read your examples.

How will PC Systems change its business to accommodate these new buyers and engineers? We have already started, hence the creation of this blog. In the future, we will become as transparent as possible. One step we have taken to do that is to launch a new ERP which is a significant investment for a company of our size. We feel it will allow us to provide a higher level of customer service because of the increased business intelligence we can pull from it. Also, our website will become more interactive.

The next question is, how do you accommodate the new digital natives while not alienating the older generation of buyers and engineers. I feel this will become a balancing act that we will monitor very closely.

I don’t want anyone to think that our workshop focused only on digital natives. The day was full of interesting and useful information that will make our company better. The digital native “bit” was only about 10% of the entire workshop, but I thought it would be a good introduction to a blog.

Thanks for reading! If there are digital natives out there, I apologize for any bruised feelings. The above statements are obviously stereotypes, but in most cases, I would expect them not to be far from the truth (myself included).