EMSNOW Executive Interview – Carlos Takahashi, ASM Assembly Systems

Carlos Takahashi is General Manager for ASM Assembly Systems in Mexico, supplying high technology equipment and software solutions for Industry 4.0 manufacturing systems. ASM is considered a leader in Mexico,  with its well-known brands, Siplace and Dek. We caught up with Carlos to give us an update on ASM’s business model in Mexico, among other topics.

EMSNOW: Please give us a general overview of your business in Mexico.

ASM in Mexico promotes sales and provide the best overall SMT equipment and software solutions, strongly backed-up with supplementary field and applications services, remote digital and live support, as well as the most advance training, including virtual reality enablement, to all PCB assemblers in the country. ASM’s products are: SIPLACE high speed, high accuracy, high mix electronic component placement machines; DEK high performance screen printers for all types of solder paste and screens; ASM Process Lens 5D SPI equipment, ASM Industry 4.0 software suites for Material Management in the production floor, MES software solutions for SMT lines and whole factory requirements. ASM is a company which keeps a very strong investment all over the world, and pushes PCB assembly technology through significant R&D new product development.

 

EMSNOW: What are you seeing in the market this year; what are the positive trends?

Significant new opportunities are arising due to geopolitical changes worldwide which are helping Mexico receive more foreign direct investments for electronic products assembly. The new Canada-USA-Mexico Trade Agreement provides certainty to existing companies, who are actively searching to increase their PCB and end products manufacturing capacities. Similarly, we see an increased count of new customers transferring production from Asia and Europe, to expand their operations in Mexico. We foresee a true positive year and are looking to increase our market share due to the extremely powerful products range from ASM.

 

EMSNOW: What are the challenges in the region this year?

Although we can’t see all the different avenues of events within the whole year, we keep our positive focus and efforts to get the best of all the different opportunities we see coming. We are of course concerned about the Covid-19 pandemic and will be waiting to see how that unfolds.

 

EMSNOW: What has been the impact of the change in the government on your business? On the overall industry?

Most of our customers are foreign multinationals, and so our business is normally not affected by the changes happening to the local economy.

 

EMSNOW: What are the unique opportunities for growth in Mexico?

Mexico has multiple areas for growth today: PCB assembly is only one of them, and it can be vastly improved and transformed, through the usage of newer Industry 4.0 technologies which will allow our direct customers, and our country, to keep-up with the most advanced countries in the same ecosystem and business environment. Mexico manufacturing in general needs to convert itself from the former “maquiladora” concept into the highly advanced interconnected assembly lines and factories which can produce quality at any required rate, and with a better way to link those with the rest of the supply chain: product distribution, logistics, to increase end users satisfaction.

EMSNOW: Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

ASM is an unquestionable leader in our market, and has proven that its technologies, products, and support to help any customer of any size and product need to be properly served with attention to their needs from their product concept through the manufacturing, and the factory information sharing, logging, and processing to increase their chances to succeed in their own markets.