Last month, I wrote about the need for PWB suppliers to pursue growth by managing for it. I defined managing as essentially a process of planning, organizing, implementing, and measuring resources to achieve identified goals. To be effective, the process demands personal and leadership skills and disciplines. But to provide direction and focus for those skills, it demands also a clear identification of goals to be achieved. As the old bromide goes: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” So to manage successfully for growth requires knowing where growth lies, and mapping out the strategies that will get you there.

As a long-time consultant to electronics and IT-related companies, I submit that there are three major areas of growth potential. The first is the explosion of wireless technology. In a Business Week interview, Andy Grove, Intel’s Chairman said: “The world is being turned into digital representation…. Wireless everything is eliminating the most labor intensive and most cumbersome part of electronics, which is cabling.”

The consequence of this development is that OEM’s are being forced to redesign and reengineer products, product lines, and processes. The combined pressures for improved product performance and user-cost savings through the elimination of labor-intensive cabling, makes these steps mandatory. And herein lies a strong growth opportunity. Can anyone seriously think of an electronics or IT-based product that will not demand innovative circuit board technology to support its development? How can you implement advances in wi-fi and broadband networking, smart phones, digital television, not to mention nanothechnology and biomedical technology, without corresponding advances in PC technology? And as these wireless markets expand, the opportunities for PWB growth will expand as well.

The second area for growth lies in the continuing restructuring of electronics and electronics-related industries. At one time, that structure was clear and well-defined. There were OEM’s, who designed, manufactured, and marketed products and support services, and there were EMS providers, to whom OEM’s outsourced some elements of assembly and test. Over the past few years, OEM outsourcing has expanded to include EMS design and procurement. Some OEM’s have become ”virtual” in the sense that they do little more than marketing and outsource everything else. Meanwhile EMS’s have been pursuing the outsourcing strategy themselves, farming out to other EMS’s elements of design and fabrication. These developments foretell an outsourcing paradigm already manifest in the aircraft industry. BOEING, on its new 7E7 long-range aircraft, is leaving the detail design and development of systems, subsystems, and components to outside suppliers. By so doing, it will reduce assembly time on each craft from 20 days to 3.

That same strategy is appearing in the electronics and IT industries, and with the growing demands of wireless technology, it will accelerate. For PWB suppliers, growth will depend on managing resources to:

1. identify, correctly, the major players in wireless technology, and establish where responsibility lies for product, system, or component design and source qualification. Is it with a fully integrated OEM or EMS, or is it with virtual ones? Determining the facts will help identify meaningful buying influences in the buying decision process.

2. demonstrate that board fabrication demands technology different from assembly, and that retaining boards in-house is neither technologically nor economically cost-effective. This is the essence of the Value Selling message, and in this evolving environment, the ability to formulate and articulate that message is increasingly critical.

The third area for growth is an inherent complement to the two areas already cited. In view of the evolving trends in wireless technology, and more extensive ands intensive outsourcing, managing for growth will demand a company-wide reorientation from selling to marketing – from seeking out and closing discrete sales, to establishing and promoting alliances and partnerships. Necessarily, the evolving trends I’ve cited influence buying strategies and tactics. OEM’s and EMS’s, driven by the twin demands of new product and product applications, as well as more rapid time to market, will be more focused on technical, logistical, and management capabilities than on simple price concessions. They will be less interested in short-term considerations than longer-term ones. For many PWB suppliers, this change in perspective will not be accepted easily. For others, it will not be believed. After the devastating experience of the past few years, where price was the principal buying concern, it will be difficult to adapt to a different mind-set. But in our economic system, cycles are a built-in phenomenon. We’re coming out of the down-leg of one cycle, and entering a new one. Recognize that fact and manage your resources to grow in the coming up-leg of the new cycle.