OCCAM: The Time is NOW!

One of my favorite books is a little tome named “Who Moved My Cheese.” I am sure even those of you who don’t spend a lot of time reading books have at least heard of it and know that the title refers to people, especially in business, who are so stuck in their ways that they get upset if something changes. Hence the title.

Our business members know this kind of thinking is especially true. It always makes me laugh when one of my innovative friends comes up with a new way to do something and is afraid that someone will steal his idea. I always tell him that no one in our business, especially a PCB engineer, has ever thought enough about someone else’s innovative idea to steal it!

I have come up with a list that I call “The 50 Reasons why it won’t work,” which lists all the reasons I have heard over the years why something new and innovative won’t work.

Nesting comes to mind. The idea of building a panel of PCBs with multiple part numbers is something that several companies are now doing daily and at great profit, I may add. Yet the idea, when first proposed, resulted in howls of laughter by the don’t move my cheese crowd.

Even the idea of a process like the ASAP process, producing boards with sub-one million lines, brought even more roars of laughter when it was initially proposed. Now, some companies like American Standard Circuits do it daily.

This led to the creation of the new (only 17-year-old) OCCAM Technology, which was invented by my dear friend and industry genius Joe Fjelstad.

This new 17-year-old technology has not caught on because it is too big a chuck of cheese moving too far to be accepted.

I’m not very technical, but I will try to explain in my English major what OCCAM technology does. It eliminates solder. That’s it…it eliminates solder from building and assembling PCBs. It builds component assemblies in reverse order with a “components first” approach. Still the same, but different.

?So, what’s the big deal? Well, it is a very big deal, and here’s why. Here are the benefits of OCCAM. First, it will lower the overall costs of materials. It will reduce the basic footprint of a PCB factory. It will reduce the size and weight of the product. It will enhance the assembly process, including EMI/ESD Protection, reduce problems with moisture, promote heat management, and provide a whole new suite of capabilities for product designers to dramatically improve the value of component assemblies, moving the industry up the value chain. And finally, even the most narrow-minded among us have to admit to the benefits of an electronics industry without solders.

As I said earlier, that’s a lot of cheese and movement. It's too much for most people in our industry to swallow. Too many changes at one time.

But the thing is this. It can and will work if we dare to move forward and put that pretty significant dent in the universe. If not now, then later, I will ask why not now. Why not adapt this solution to make the world and our industry a far better place?

Okay, I can hear you scurrying to find that list of 50 reasons this won’t work. I bet you are frantically adding another 50 reasons why it won’t work. But don’t bother. Over the last 17 years, we have heard them all and more. But during that time, we have also found as many reasons as possible why it should work, it could work, and it must work. We have heard it all, but we are still here and have a mission to move forward to make it work.

At Rice University on September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy declared, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. After all, that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”

And, of course, on July 21st, 1969, we, the United States of America, landed on the moon.

Now, it is our turn. It is time for our industry to leave the comfort zone of our maze and move forward with the courage, insight, and passion to move our industry to the forefront of innovation and make that change to our industry and the world. Get in touch with me if you want to learn more.

It’s only common sense.