Interview with Tom Askew on How He Invented PanelRight

Hello everyone. Welcome to Conscious Design Podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I'm here with Tom to talk about circuit boards, something that we, we all think we know everything about them at this point, but we don't. So welcome, welcome to being on the show. Really good to have you here.

Thanks, Ian.

Yeah, so I know we've talked about what you do and board efficiencies and how to make, you know, circuit boards more sustainable, more effective cost-wise, things like that. But could you explain a little bit about what you're, what you're doing and kind of the waste that we're not looking at and haven't been seeing?

Excellent. Yes, thanks for that question. Thanks for having me on. So here at Panelrite, we've, uh, we've uncovered that, uh, industry-wide there's, um, waste that's generated back up at the supply house when they're making your printed circuit board. So this is— it's— this difficult, if not impossible, for any of the OEMs or contract manufacturers or whatnot to see. Because when they're presented with their panel that the board house has done their best on for you, they're not seeing that the board house is really happy with an 80% utilization, if we can say that. So in an $80 billion industry, I'm seeing the potential of saving companies that first 25% on average is what I see when I go in and I take a look at your current selection of panels for your PCBs. So, It's, it's a, it's a bit of an education because it's pretty cloaked in discovery, but I think to simplify it, the best way to do is just to reach out and let us, and let us test your current production and let us see where you fall in on, on that, on that curve. So we can go into a number of reasons why that is what it is. I think the biggest reason is the industry is really set up for speed, supplying the customer with their quickest, quickest to market product, which is the printed circuit board, so that they can produce what they're producing and go. So And what that means is, out of the literally thousands of, I will call them pure panels that are available, most board houses really have 2 methods that they, they like to use to service their customer. If their customers are pretty much landing on one of the 6 different master panel sizes, pretty much everything that they're going to be supplying to their customer base is going to be based on one of those current sizes. And you can think of the, the master panel sizes as pieces of plywood in different sizes, you know, for— because it is all board industry and paper industry driven for efficiencies on their end. So what that And out of the 6 master sizes, there may be some bigger companies that use a smattering of some of those sizes across, across the board. But in either case, they're only looking at, you know, a mere handful of what's available out there again, so they can get your board panelized and, and get you, get you started. And the— on the purchasing side, on the OEM purchasing side, their only ability to check on the supplier, how well the supplier is doing, is to bid that board out to different supply houses. Problem is, is that your waste is already built in and the other suppliers are going to quote you the same. same price based on that design. So you're never going to see that— how much waste there was upfront. And then away they go. I mean, and they are happy with giving you 80% utilization. So everybody in that case is happy. What they don't tell you is you as the OEM or the contract manufacturer, you're paying for that waste, whether you realize it or not. And you just don't see it because that's already trimmed off your board by the time you get it and put it on your SMT PCBA process line and manufacture that, populate it, test it, and put it in your product. So, um, that's, that's sort of the, um, you know, first pass high look, um, at the opportunity that's out there. Um, Okay. So any, any opportunity to reach out and get the message out is really, is really welcome. I think it'll do go a long way to, again, reducing that toxic material from the get-go. It'll give capacity back to the board houses because they won't be wasting as much, and you'll be paying a lower price for your circuit board, which in most cases is one of the top 5 most expensive line items on your BOM when it comes to that printed circuit board itself, being the printed circuit board itself.

Right.

With all the chips and that that go on there.

Well, and you mentioned, so you mentioned 80% efficiency. And I think we talked about, I've worked in like sheet metal and things like that, where you are doing terrible if you're below 90%, right? There's a huge efficiency drive to maximize your material. And I worked at companies where 95% was the minimum goal. In order to use up the sheet metal as efficiently as possible. So it's, it's kind of an interesting— but that one, a lot more people are able to do themselves, right? They have more in-house capability to do, you know, you're, you're more one person. One company will take raw material, they'll cut it, form it, and do everything themselves and create a product, whereas circuit boards are a little bit more Step in process, right? Somebody makes the board, then somebody cuts the board, and then somebody works from there. And it's not, not the same. You can't just set up a machine shop and start stamping some, some circuit boards right away. So there's, so there's that, that process. So kind of how, because I, I working in design, I never knew how inefficient circuit boards are, and I've been ordering boards for a long time now. So what's— what kind of led you to figure out this inefficiency, and how kind of— how did we arrive, arrive here, basically? How'd we get here, and how'd you figure it— how'd you figure it out?

Okay, so you, you want the long story. Yeah, um, so I, I grew up in, in the high-tech industry. You know, I've been working with PC boards for 40-odd years now and started out more on the, um, manufacturing engineering end, if you will. Uh, but as I was— I'm an industrial engineer by trade training— so as I was, um, You know, through course of events, laying out factories, working with logistics teams, working with the product planning teams, program management, and on the factory floor, relaying out for one-piece flow, automation, doing automation. It was really— When I did the automation, I first learned how cloak-and-dagger PC board design is, because I needed to make a change to the PC board, and I quickly ran into the, the wall of, oh my, you know, we spent whatever to get this thing lined up. We were not going to touch this thing. And it wasn't until I crossed over into the R&D side of the world where this particular chief engineer that I was working under really understood how utilization had a direct effect on the pricing of the boards. And he would have layout parties where he would gather all the product design engineers, electrical engineers, the mechanical engineers, the PCB layout engineers, literally into a conference room for days where they would be drawing different panels, different stack-ups, different orientations to utilize more of the material and to keep the prices low. And that for me was when the light went off that PCBs over the course of their existence are nothing more than a cog in the manufacturing process that really dictates Whether how well it's laid out or the panelization of it dictates, one, the waste that you're going to get up front at the board house, and how efficient on the back end your PCB operation is really going to run. And that's sort of been stuck in this last iteration and hasn't changed. And the process that's been used has been handed down engineer to engineer over the, over the tens of decades that boards have been in— been involved. Um, that as an industrial engineer, I just, I just went back and just reconstituted the process from scratch. And then the, the, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel came when I realized the information that they— everyone has at the OEM manufacturer level is incomplete to what the warehouse people are actually delivering. Um, so that mismatch has Sent this on its path, controlled its path for the duration.

And it seems like speed, speed has been probably one of the main, main drivers of it, because obviously, if you're sitting for days and days thinking about how to lay out a board and make it more efficient, that's time, right? That, that adds days to your production time. So is there a way around that? Is there something— is there a balance where we can, you know, aim for 90%? Is that— and still be efficient? Is there automation? Kind of what's— because obviously nobody wants to give up speed, or at least it's a harder sell, right, to give up speed. Unless there's a huge cost savings, right? So there's always, right, there's always that balanced conversation. So I guess, how are you, how are you approaching that?

So, so I am at the stage where I'm still the only one that can do, can do this work. And I know in order to replicate this and really spread this far and wide, um, you know, software is— will have to be developed that will have all the rules and, um, guardrails in it so that it then can be widely distributed so that industries can do it themselves. Fortunately, we're still a year to 5 years away from that happening. So in the meantime, I'm working to essentially generate the capital that I can then work with the right industries and that to really put a package around this. Because you're right. So we are aligned with the ECM Group, which is a consortium of of board manufacturers. In fact, it was the CEO of that group that reached out to me when, when I became available, as I came out of private industry, that commented that I'm the only one that, that does this, and that I needed to do this now for the rest of, rest of the world, because it's not, it's not happening today. Of course, they work with clients that are doing 10,000 new designs a day, which is immediately overwhelming for me.

But, um, that's a lot for any one person.

But, uh, but I need to start, I need to start somewhere, um, in order to, um, generate the capital needed to actually turn this into a global program that can be used globally. This works for any PC board in any industry, flex, whether it's flex rigid, rigid flex, or film. And, you know, consumers— I've talked to a lot of my former manufacturing engineers that knew what I was doing, know what I was doing. And that are now at different places. And, you know, the tear comes to their eye when they see what's happening at their current place of employment versus what they've known me to do for them in the past. So the need is out there, and it's, it's education that's, that's going to get us get us closer every day.

So your focus— and I think you mentioned this when we were chatting just, just before starting to record— education is, is really your focus right now. So are you, are you seeing companies want to do this? Are there, like, is there sectors or certain companies that are really wanting to do this? Or are you still just in the, hey guys, look at what I found, let's, let's learn how to do this better, and still in that You know, kind of education-only part?

Um, so we've been doing this for really since January of this year. Um, and the, the, the message has, has reached, uh, people. We can't predict who is going to receive the message and how that message is going to get translated into their organization because every organization is set up differently. Every organization does their PC board boards differently and quite challengingly. Most people within the organization may not even know who's doing the boards internally. So reaching out and finding that right person is, is sort of a needle in the haystack problem that we're running into right now. Now, we've reached out to thousands of different companies. at this point. Now, we're getting traction. We're seeing the most traction right now with procurement people. Here's a way that they are being— we're telling them that they can save money on their PC board. So they're interested. The ones that are really tied in and can guide their organizations are pulling us in for a test. A lot of them, when they reach out to their engineering entity, the engineers say, you know, we already do this. We already have a group that does this. We already know we're doing the best we can. and pretty much shut it down. But the ones that do break through and actually give us a, um, board to look at, a solution, we're finding anywhere from— the lowest is 5%, the highest is 50%. Yeah, it, it depends on— so the average is 25%. It's the average is 25%, and we can tell We can tell exactly where they either are heading in the right direction, have the right idea, but maybe their board house just is, you know, isn't, isn't looking at all the solutions that are available to them. And they don't really know that there's something another size out there. Boardhouses will make anything that I— that any— anything that I design, the Boardhouses will make. In fact, ECM Group is, is our trusted global supplier. Any design that I come up with, I know that they're going to be able to make for the price that I, that I give a company. But most companies still want to work with their own suppliers, which is absolutely fine. They just may reach out with my design and their supplier may come back and say, well, you know, we don't carry that size. Maybe they don't, but in this case they should, and there's no reason why they can't get the sizes that I offer. It's just that they— it's more convenient for them just to stock their shelves with whatever their biggest supplier is consuming. That's what they're going to stock their shelves with.

Right. Now, is this, is this a, you know, if you're running a company and you're putting circuit boards into your products, is this a design solution that kind of, at what stage, which, which entity in this process, right? Because you have a board house, you have whoever produces, you know, actually puts the components on it, and then you have, you know, probably a few more companies involved. So where's— Which company can really drive it? If I run a product company and I have a product with a circuit board in it, can I actually drive this requirement, or do you— are you talking to people, you know, closer to the board manufacturers? Like, what's your— who can drive this really, this efficiency?

Yeah, so So we can engage at any stage of, you know, from prototype design right through launch and even on a continuing engineering basis if somebody wants to go back and take a look at any potential savings that they could yield, that their board could yield for them. And the only difference between the two is once you've already put that board, in a panel that you've made and then put in your product, my solution in that savings that is going to generate of what you would have been paying or what— to what you would now pay would need to go into most likely to reset up your PCBA line. You'd need new stencils for your SMT. You'd need— because it'll be a different—

Right.

It'll be a different panel size. May or may not be a different circuit count on the panel, a different up, you know, 4 up versus 6 up.

Right, right.

And then of course your test fixtures, anything that the panel's used for would need to be updated and that cost accounted for to see if the savings were enough. So if you're, if you're, if you're a manufacturer that's making, um, onesies, twosies, thousands kind of thing, you definitely want to be up front in the process because you don't want to have to spend your money on your downline capital twice. Right.

Yeah, nobody wants to do that.

Right. And then anybody that's already out in production If you're making millions of units and we're going to save you a penny, nickel, dime, $0.40, a dollar, it depends. You may take that information and say, ooh, I want to do better next time and not actually do anything in this product. But at least now you know that we can— We can anchor you based on whatever you're going to conventionally get early in the process. And we'll work through all the iterations as you iterate on your design. Because we worked in R&D for years. Nothing's out of the— comes out of the chute right or satisfactorily the first time.

Yeah.

But we'll iterate right along with you. In fact, we will actually partner with you And all this is, all this is free. It's just part of our service. But we can tell you, for example, marketing comes down and says, hey, we absolutely need this new feature on this board, you know, design it in. And everybody goes, well, in order to do that, I got to grow the board. Well, we can tell you how best to grow the board without increasing your cost, or we can tell you the growth that you're doing on this board is going to cost you this much.

Right.

We can get down to that fine of detail. Same time, if we're working with you upfront and doing iterations, we're going to evaluate your board for any cost savings, additional cost savings. So, you may have a design that started out with your MEs, filling out whatever the product profile is, and it happens to be a, you know, strange shape or whatever it is, but they're doing that in order to preserve as much board space because they're, you know, upfront in the process, they're not sure how much layout guys are going to need for whatever it is, so they try to give them the most. But again, we have the capability where we can look at that design and look at your panelization and then Recommend, suggest where judicious trimming— millimeters, fractions of a millimeter count in, in this, in this world that we're playing in— where you can maybe trim or do something else, you would look at that, run it through your processes of manufacturing electrical test. And if you approve that, then Maybe I'll get you another 10% on your board savings, or you would get another 10% on your board savings. Again, we can tell you what that change would cost or save.

Right.

Rail thicknesses, anything, anything that has to do with the board. Once we get your model installed and we get your conventional price, we can determine lots of different savings. Which also brings up the fact that most of the world panelizes one circuit type per panel. There'll be a 6-up of one board. Say your product takes 3 boards. Maybe it's a 6-up of this one board, it's a 4-up of another board, and it's an 8-up on the third board. 3rd board. Well, your production planning people have to manage all that. How many panels of each one do I have to send down the line? And you as the manufacturer have your guys set up the line, run however many panels you need of that, of each one of those, test them, and they wait at the end of your line until all your panels have gone through, and then you can start building. product and then functionally test them, and then you find out that you have a problem on board number 2. Well, now everything's either going to go for rework or you're going to make panel 2 all over again depending on what the issue is. So we will work with any OEM or contract manufacturer, and what we like to do is we like to build what we call family panels. So we will look at your product, we will look at the type of boards that you have, and if it makes sense where the technology is close enough, we'll optimize in that case all 3 circuits on 1 panel so that when you send that panel down the line now, you're going to depanel 5 sets of 3 boards to make 5 good product. At the end of that run. So that means on Monday morning when you set up your line and you start running, by Monday afternoon you're already seeing if you've got good product. And if you don't, you're good in-circuit test that you're going to catch whatever issue that you have and make that correction right away. So scenario 1, you've bought test equipment for 3, 3 boards. Line fixtures, screens, and you start building your product on Thursday. And in our method, we like to first cost reduce your 3 circuits so that they're cost efficient. Again, probably on average saving you 25% per circuit material-wise. Then we like to, without increasing the cost, take those 3 and put those onto single-family panel that you buy your test fixtures, screens, and infrastructure set up for just that one panel. So that saves you 2/3 of your capital cost, and it gets you to production 2/3 faster. You're starting to produce Monday versus waiting for Thursday. So your throughput goes up, your efficiency on your PCBA side Goes up 50% or more every time we do that. And again, you're still paying the lower 20— you still save 25% on your material cost.

Right. And you're reducing waste, which is— people are caring about a lot more now and looking at supply chains. So it seems like a pretty no-brainer. If you want to reduce, reduce your waste, if you're, you know, saying, oh, we have an environmentally friendly mission, we care about this stuff, this would be— this would definitely be something that you should be looking at and how to reduce waste. And it'll save money, which is always good. It's always a good thing to be able to be more sustainable and save some money.

So, so this would be so more on the education. You know, you look at the alliances that are out there measuring, you know, the carbon footprints of companies and what their chemicals that they're putting into the air or into the ground or whatever. The one thing that they don't measure is printed circuit board material. So if we could get that incorporated into, into, uh, the mainstream, Then absolutely, we can calculate how many square feet of material you saved from being created in the first place that you're no longer using and ends up as scrap on the board house floor before it gets to you that then, you know, depanel and then have your own depanel scrap that you have to deal with in an environmentally friendly way. So We can calculate all that. We can keep track of that for each customer so that if they can use that to whatever offset carbon footprint, they could get credit for that. Awesome.

Well, this has been really informational. I'm really, really happy that we were able to connect and have you on the show. And, you know, for everyone who's wanting to make a better supply chain for their PCBs, what, you know, how can they get a hold of you and what is that process? You mentioned being able to take a look at their boards. So yeah, share that.

Yeah, so right now our website is www.panelright.com, all one word, and R-I-G-H-T.com. For right, my email is tom underscore askew a s k e w at panelright.com, and also my LinkedIn address is I believe it's t t askew six zero two five.

Perfect. Um, so, and we'll make sure all those links are in the show notes too.

Yeah, yeah, that'll, that'll get you started. And you would treat us just like you would treat any of your board suppliers. We just— send us your Gerber. If you need an NDA in place first, we're happy to do NDAs. Um, but, um, your, your Gerber, we're gonna have that competitively quote, uh, so you have an apples-to-apples with what you're currently paying. We're going to use the— our ECM partner, ECM Group partners, to do that anywhere in the world. So you'll have that as comparison, and then we'll give you the panel rate price of an optimized design that we can then iterate on and discuss and go through all your DFM. And we're happy to do all that. That's what we do all day, every day.

Amazing. All right, well, anyone that wants to make their circuit boards better should definitely reach out to Tom and, and save some money and some efficiency there.

There you go, save the world.

Awesome, Tom, thank you so much. Really good having you on the show.

Thank you, Ian. A pleasure.