CEO Monthly August 2017

14 CEO MONTHLY / AUGUST 2017 , turnaround time. I don’t believe this trend will change soon. “When it comes to my leadership style, I believe that communication with all the employees must be a part of the core culture creating aspect of every organization. We’re always finding new ways to motivate our teams to achieve the company objectives. The firm’s general philosophy is that if we take care of the employees, then they will take care of the business. Our continuous effort to provide career opportunities for employees and providing them with challenges that keep them excited is in our firm’s DNA.” Ken is keen to reveal the challenges Sierra Circuits has encountered and how they have affected his role, plus he shares his future ambitions for the company. “In the past 33 years, we have reinvented ourselves almost every five years, so that we can keep pace with current industry needs and improve our service to design engineers. We want to be the design engineers’ best friend and we have always met the challenge of providing the best service to them. “Our future aspirations are to service every design engineer in the world and continuously improve our commitment to them, by creating as much Sierra Circuits is a Silicon Valley-based, high-technology printed circuit boards manufacturer and assembler, who were pleased to be included in the 2017 Global CEO Top 100. To celebrate this achievement, we interviewed the company’s CEO, Ken Bahl, to learnmore about them, their R&D projects and his career. A Leader in the Electronics Industry Sierra Circuits specializes in assisting printed circuit board designers, to quickly prototype their designs. They have the highest technology, quickest turnaround time in the industry, to support the designer’s schedule and ultimately to help the end- customer meet their time-to- market deadlines. Sierra Circuits continuously works on R&D projects, to assist the designers in their next level products. Ken Bahl tells us more about the company and provides a flavor of his own career background, as the interview kicks off. “All forward-looking company like Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla and about twenty-thousand more are our customers. We see their inventions at an early stage and help commercialize them. “I started my career as a process engineer in the electronics industry. From there, every two to three years, I would get a promotion for the next job, ending up in President and General Manager roles. All of them were in electronics industry and on multiple occasions, I helped save and grow businesses. Based on that experience, I decided to start my own business, because of the freedom it provided me to continuously grow, and implement my ideas without constraints. “Every job I did was an extension to my experience, so, when I started the company I felt I had completed my business education. For the last 33 years, Sierra Circuits has been continuously improving, growing and innovating to service the industry better.” Ken then highlights the company’s approach when undertaking a new client or project, how it feels to have been selected in the 2017 Global CEO Top 100 and their ongoing strategy. “Our object is to educate, support, and service the Design Engineers. In that mission, we have customer service representatives, engineering departments and product consulting that is offered to our customers. Our end objective is to make sure the customer is completely taken care of, in terms of fulfilling their engineering needs. Our numerous customer testimonials confirm that we are doing a good job for them. “I feel very good to be a part of the 2017 Global CEO Top 100. It is an honour that the company has achieved the status worthy of being in that group. “Our ongoing strategy is to service increasing number of design engineers on a worldwide basis. To achieve this, we take frequent customer inputs to update and enhance our service to them. Whatever benefits them, becomes part of our plan. However, what the customer cannot tell us is about the process innovations that can improve the quality, technology levels and cost of the future electronic products. That is why we have internal technical and R&D teams. We are in the process of patenting technologies, that will give the electronic industry a major boost. For example, the performance levels that the wireless industry will need for future innovations, cannot be met with current technology; Sierra is on the path to innovate the process to meet those needs!” The conversation then moves to the wider industry, as Ken explains to us. He also provides us with a taste of his leadership style, that is how to ensure that everyone understands his vision and works towards it. “In all my career, I’ve never seen the speed with which innovative products are being created today. It is also unprecedented how quickly old products are being changed with new innovative designs. The time-to-market is shrinking for every OEM and that gives us increasing opportunities to service them, with our highest technology and quickest 1707CE03