Believe in our board shops: your products are not commodities, and you deserve all due respect.

THE TIME HAS come for me to discuss what I believe about the board industry and why it's important to the concept of power selling. It is time that I declare my goals for helping North American board shops.

First of all, I believe in our shops. I believe that if they are well run and if their owners understand and respect sales and marketing, the shops will do well. I also believe that we have to do everything in our power to make sure that our shops have the full respect of the electronics community. We must at all times be portrayed in the true light of our high-tech status.

After all, a 28-layer blind and buried via board is not a commodity! A product that takes from 40 to 140 individual steps to build is not a commodity. A product that has been an integral part of the formulation of this country--from guided missile control systems to the space shuttle, from medical devices to telecommunications devices--is not a commodity. There would have been no high-tech revolution without circuit boards, no advanced telecommunications, no space age, no personal computers and no lifesaving medical electronics.

Just think: If you pulled a George Bailey act and eliminated the circuit board from the history of the world, you would not have a very wonderful life. Get the picture? Electronics wouldn't exist without PCBs. And quite frankly, the shops that make up the PCB industry do not get enough credit.

In terms of North America, the PCB shops have been under a commodization barrage for decades. In the '70s we were told how much smarter the Japanese shops and shop owners were. The '80s and '90s brought Asians into the marketplace. While companies like IBM and Unisys were holding our feet to the fire in terms of EPA requirements, SPC, TQM and other restrictive and expensive demands, they were also buying boards from the Far East (which at that time had none of our restrictions) and comparing our prices unfavorably to theirs.

Our challenge is to reverse this process. My desire is that the shops and their workers will be viewed, respected and regarded as the true PCB experts that they are. It is high time that these companies have a say in determining their future, and that they decide what rules, regulations and specs they will be governed by.

Lately I have been spending some time with the folks at USPCA, where I think our best hope for respect lies. One of the things we have discussed is making sure that the shops have ways to influence specs and regulations. Most recently, USPCA has been developing an initiative to monitor the new specifications, qualifications and regulations that continuously threaten the board shops' ability to survive in a challenging marketplace. A committee has been assigned to review specs and regulations as they are developed and ensure that they are fair to the board shops. The committee plans to review the new specs before they come into effect, write clear and simple summaries of those specs and distribute these summaries to their membership for comments and opinions, which will then be feed back to the IPC.

Hopefully this will help stamp out the barrage of unwanted and unfair specs, qualifications and regulations that have victimized board shops for years. In all fairness, shops always had the ability to have their say, but the process has been too cumbersome. This process will be more simple and much more effective.

Long ago I dedicated my career to making board shops better. I will do whatever it takes to make sure that our customers and vendors understand the value of our products, and that they treat our products, companies and people with due respect. If we succeed in gaining the proper regard and respect for the shops, and if we can get our customers and vendors to understand the value of our technology and expertise, then our selling will truly become more powerful.

That's where I stand. Wherever PCB engineers are not treated with respect, I'll be there. Whenever board shops are called "stupid" and "backwards," I'll defend them. Wherever there is injustice with specs and regulations, I'll stand up. Until our industry is elevated to the true high-tech/non-commodity position that it deserves, I'll be here.

DAN BEAULIEU is a founding partner in D.B. Management Group (www, dbmpcb.com). He can be reached at 207-873-0793; [e-mail]. His recently published book, Printed Circuit Board Basics, is available from UP Media Group.