The saying goes, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” It would be easy to apply that saying to the current economic scene. Indeed, PWB suppliers are already assuming that because business has perked up in the defense, computer, and wireless communication industries, the fallout from those industries will necessarily benefit them. What feeds that assumption are two commonly held fallacies.

First is the notion that tides rise at constant and continuing rates, so that this “rising tide” will do the same. This concept of tides is not true. There are neap tides, flood tides, riptides, and undertows, and their impact on the affected environment can be anything from benign to disastrous. In the economic sense, the metaphor of tides and their impact is equally far-ranging.

The second belief is equally false. All boats do not rise and fall similarly. Depending on their design, structure, and physical composition, not to mention the skill and experience of their navigators, boats can avoid, steer around, and maneuver over and through tidal waves. This is even more the case when those “boats” are business entities, making their way through waves that are economic.

I believe that this simplistic notion about rising or falling tides and boats is part and parcel of the passive attitudes too common among PWB producers. Those attitudes were conceived and developed by the very origins of the industry itself. They reflect the fact that the industry was given birth by OEMs that, for economic and strategic reasons, decided to farm out board fabrication. In so doing, they specified board design, board materials, board production and quality control processes. To them, boards were a commodity to be sourced on the basis of competition and price. When OEM business was good, board business was good. When it was bad, board business was bad. This perceived symbiosis, which sadly persists today, has made for the passive notion that there’s little we can do to improve our lot. We’re victims of the OEM business environment, and we rise or fall as that environment dictates.

For those who have that perception, and hold to those beliefs, I submit that their prospects for survival, let alone growth, are poor. To begin with, this rising recovery tide is fragile. It can be reversed by rising costs of raw materials, oil shortages, the Iraqi war and terrorism, budget deficits and the twin dangers of global competition and declining global demand. To be complacent about the future, based on current improving conditions, is folly. If you believe your boat, necessarily, will rise as the economic tide rises, you’re in for a sad surprise. You saw what happened after the dot-com debacle of the late 1990s, when PWB producers were eliminated through acquisitions or out-and-out business failure. That can happen again.

But more to the point, the PWB industry of today is not that of the 1970s and 1980s. It is no longer a stuffer of boards. It has developed technologies never conceived in earlier years – high-multiple level boards, flexible boards, miniaturized boards, boards designed for applications made constantly more demanding by changing market and technical requirements of automotive, medical, communication, and electronic-related OEMs. Today, the industry is not selling a commodity. It’s selling solutions to design and production problems. It’s selling technical, logistical, information services and support. It’s selling capabilities complementary to customer market, competitive, and strategic objectives. In a much used and abused term, it’s selling Value.

Whether PWB companies recognize that fact is questionable. Indeed, many of them acknowledge it in theory, but that’s not enough. What they must do is learn how to implement the strategies and practices that make Value Selling a reality. Specifically:

They need to know their market—current and prospective—better.

They need to know their customers’ and their customers’ customers’ requirements more intimately – their perceptions of Value, their current and future wants and needs.

They need to plan more strategically. Are we in the right markets? Have we targeted the right customer?

They need to reexamine their competencies and capabilities. What stood us in good stead before, may not do the trick today.

They need to structure their supply chain for greater competitive advantage, from original sources of product and process materials to ultimate end-user.

Two years ago, I developed these points in an article for CircuiTree’s Profiles publication. It was entitled “Positioning Your Company for the Next Downturn.” My purpose in citing it now is not to sound Cassandra-like. But tides, oceanic and economic, rise and fall. Boats, and surely your business, should be structured and navigated to deal effectively with all tides. Clearly, your companies deserve nothing less.