EMS@C-LEVEL
As Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company and SCOOP writer, Philip Stoten, continues to talk to EMS (Electronic Manufacturing Services) executives he learns more about their individual and collective experiences and their expectations for their own businesses and for the entire electronic manufacturing industry.
EMS@C-LEVEL
Electronica 24: Steve Driver on Fresh Talent and Green Tech in the PCB World
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Discover how innovation meets sustainability with Steve Driver, CEO of Jiva Materials as we uncover the transformative journey of creating a green solution for printed circuit boards (PCBs). When industry veteran Steve teams up with young innovator Jack, sparks fly, igniting a revolution in electronic materials. Together, they're addressing the pressing need for sustainable options within an industry known for its resistance to change. From overcoming skepticism to reaching significant milestones in 2024, learn how this dynamic team has navigated the challenging path of introducing a disruptive product that promises to reshape the market.
Explore the strategic moves that brought them to the forefront, including securing a major American OEM as a customer and the importance of OEM involvement in promoting the product's life-cycle benefits. Steve shares valuable insights into the excitement and hurdles of bringing a new technology to market, emphasizing the vital role of fresh talent in keeping the industry vibrant. Whether you're an industry insider eager for the latest in green technology or simply curious about the future of PCBs, this episode is packed with lessons on innovation, collaboration, and the drive to commercialize a sustainable product in a competitive landscape.
EMS@C-Level at electronica 2024 was hosted by IPC (https://www.ipc.org/)
EMS@C-Level is hosted by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Global Electronics Association (https://www.electronics.org)
You can see video versions of all of the EMS@C-Level pods on our YouTube playlist.
Hello, I'm Philip Slotin. I am at the Electronica 2024 and I am joined by Steve Driver of Jeeva Materials. Steve, great to talk to you. Thanks for stopping by. I just talked to Jack, who's the innovator behind this product, and what I find really interesting is an old dinosaur like you, who knows the industry inside out, back to front working with a young gun, who's come up with something new. What? What attracted you to this particular product? Did you find them? Did they find you?
Speaker 2they found me this old dinosaur still likes something new to get the team. Yeah, jack is. Uh, as you said, young guns come up with a great idea. We've got to get these young guns in the industry, otherwise we haven't got an industry, yeah. So, yeah, I've been very happy five years supporting jack, mentoring jack yeah, and introducing jack into our world of pcbs. Phil, as you know, you and I have both been around this actually 40 years. There hasn't been a lot of change. There have been, if you like, variations on existing tech. This is very disruptive. We're coming in with something very, very new. It's taken probably four years for people to accept what we're doing. We had a lot of naysayers.
Speaker 1Yeah, of course we did.
Speaker 2And then suddenly, now we seem to have hit a sweet spot. I've been using this terminology. We're just looking for a place on the shelf. We want to work alongside the other laminates.
Speaker 2We're not trying to take out anybody. We're trying to give people an option. There's a lot of laminates out there. There's many, many, many choices. Yeah, like 12 different varieties of different laminates, ranging from high performance with signal integrity down to low cost laminates like FR1 and FR2's. Yeah, we're the only player that's offering a green solution. Yeah, we've got a sustainable material and Jack's idea is great. Yeah, absolutely, we're a good team. Yeah, apart from the old dinosaur bit, I'm probably a little bit more you know, a bit more drive than Jack. Jack's very focused, very calculated.
Speaker 1Wants to get it right. Wants to get it right.
Speaker 2If you want to commercialize a product, you've got to get running with something that's new enough, yeah. Get some low-hanging fruit and start commercializing it. Get some money in the bank and get some early adopters.
Speaker 1Yeah, I know that's hugely valuable and it's the Silicon. Valley idea of move fast and break fast, isn't it? You need to be doing that, it is. And at the moment, we haven't really got anybody on our tails.
Speaker 2And coming back to your Silicon Valley analogy, we need a competitor.
Speaker 1We need a competitor.
Speaker 2To validate the market Absolutely, and we've had some good things happen this year. Yeah, 2024 has been a really good year. The recipe has been validated, we've got our v1 material version one material running and we've submitted our URL samples and we've actually just had early indication that we've got a v1 certification. Of course we wanted a V0, yeah, and we missed it by one second, but a V1 is a good start. We've got huge interest across many, many sectors. The show here. This is day three.
Speaker 2I think so now we're at day three now. We've had back-to-back appointments with major, major OEMs, ranging from automotive companies to lighting companies, all sorts of electronic companies. So we're going to get a break. We've secured this year 24 customers. Yesterday, actually, we've got a new customer on board, first purchase order from a major American OEM.
Speaker 1Brilliant so yeah, things are really good for us. Yeah, they're moving in the right direction and congratulations on that. But I think the approach is really interesting getting the OEMs involved, because the OEMs are going to have to take responsibility for their scope one, scope two, all the way through the supply chain, and they're probably the people that are going to be involved in the end of life, which is where this product really delivers its value, isn't it?
Speaker 1It's at that final point. So engaging with the OEMs first, getting it on the spec and having that trickle down through the supply chain makes sense it does so.
Speaker 2You mentioned scope one, scope two. That's absolutely right. That's their responsibility scope one, scope two, scope three is where we come in, because that's the business out of their control.
Speaker 1Yeah, so scope three we can give them and we've got it validated.
Speaker 2Our material's got a 67% carbon reduction against incumbent materials. When I say incumbent materials, we're really referring to FR4, that's where the calculations are. That's our line in the sand. So our carbon reduction that we're offering people is validated and it helps them with that Scope 3 reporting that they've got to do in the future.
Speaker 1Yeah, and it's a simple equation, isn't it?
Speaker 2If you want to improve that, scope three in your CSR report next year switch materials Yep. And we will reach an agreement with the identical performance.
Speaker 1Yes, we'll do that.
Speaker 2Identical performance. That's a question we get asked all the time now and we haven't got identical performance.
Speaker 1We've got comparable performance. There are some areas where we are not able to give the same performance.
Speaker 2But we're not looking to capture every market. Our material is fit for purpose and function in many sectors.
Speaker 1We're asking people to when they're designing their electronic product design with the end in mind.
Speaker 2So if you design with the end in mind. How long do you want this product to last? If you're looking for something that's got to last a lifetime, we're probably not the right fit we're looking for single-use electronics or low-life electronics. Something that's got five to ten years may be considered a low-life expectancy.
Speaker 1Even a car, 15 years is long enough in certain aspects of the car.
Speaker 2So what we're seeing with some of the manufacturers we're talking to is that they're taking any carbon saving where they can. So if you take a car, for example, we might not be suitable for the ECU, but we might be suitable for a seat control or a light, so there's a place for us somewhere in the supply chain.
Speaker 1Yeah, lighting feels like a really strong application and lots of single-sided, lots of double-sided boards, larger boards, because it's not just the way of mounting the component it's also basically the connector and the same thing it is, and it's the reflector and it's the carrier and everything.
Speaker 2So it's the whole light engine and the lighting market is very hard. It's a very hard market. What we're struggling with with the lighting industry is, like you said, the large circuits. Here Making something small like this is actually a lot easier than making a lighting circuit, but we're getting there. On the materials, We've got engagement from three or four major lighting companies across Europe and that's probably our hard market at the moment. The green and white boards.
Speaker 1At the moment we're kind of there with that, yeah, but the nice thing is, you speak to an.
Speaker 2OEM the.
Speaker 1OEM says I want to get on board. They take you into a board shop and you start to talk to their suppliers about it and that's where you're most at home. You understand that.
Speaker 2You're able to say you know this is going to drop into your processes. You can make these tweaks. You can be running this material, you know, next day, pretty much like that, and that's so. That's where my part has been with jack. So what I've done is I've worked with jack. Probably the last two years has been on recipe formulation, yeah and uh. So to take down those barriers of entry. Yeah, we've had to make this so that it can go into a board shop and, like you said, we can put it on the shelf with the other other. A few changes to your feed speed, a few changes to your temperatures. It's going to run and there's not going to be too many barriers. We don't want the board chopped. We don't want the assembly people saying we can't run it.
Speaker 2So where we are today, with this version of material is pretty much a drop-in, with a few treats. Yeah, that's excellent, isn't it?
Speaker 1Steve, thanks for stopping by Thank you. Really exciting product, always a pleasure mate.