SiliconExpert Podcast Episode 3 with Gary Ortiz of Sonos - Transcription

Host: Eric Singer

Producer/Director: George Karalias

Gary: Several years ago when supply chain was disrupted, it was MOSFETs. It was a specific product category. And at that time it seemed like everybody was caught helpless and stubbed their toe on the Ottoman. So to speak. And where we are today is we need, we can't afford to be in another MOSFET situation.
[00:00:25] Eric: That voice is Gary Ortiz with Sonos, home audio superpower. Under Gary's purview is supply chain management, which requires not just logistical knowledge, but a little bit of detective work as well.
[00:00:40] Gary: You know, all of these things are known knowable, but they're not served up to you on a silver platter.
[00:00:45] You have to go find these. And my colleague. He always says his Spidey sense. And our job right now is to be doing more than Spidey sense.
[00:00:56] Eric: Welcome to the Intelligent Engine. The SiliconExpert podcast that lives in the heart of the electronics industry brought to you by SiliconExpert. SiliconExpert is all about data-driven decisions with a human driven experience. We mitigate risk and manage compliance from design through sustainment, the knowledge, experience, and thought leadership of the team, partners and those we interact with every day expose unique aspects of the electronics industry and the product life cycles that live within it.
[00:01:27] These are the stories that fuel the Intelligent Engine.
[00:01:33] Today's spotlight is on Sonos, a company that's reinventing home audio. The Sonos DNA is making it easy to play. What you love. Music podcasts, movies shows audio books, radio, and more, and share it out loud with the ones you love. Sonos has more than 50 streaming services over 500 patents and distributes to more than 60 countries and their social impact program. Sonos, soundwaves supports quality music education around the world. Providing children in need with opportunities to think creatively, raise academic achievement, develop social skills and prepare for successful futures. Our guest is Gary Ortiz. His role at Sonos is to drive new and updated processes within the sourcing team, in order to scale supply chain and meet company growth and profitability goals. He's here to talk about how constant vigilance of both suppliers and analytics can help avoid surprises within a delicately balanced supply chain. Gary, thanks for being here today.
[00:02:33] Gary: I'm looking forward to this.
[00:02:35] Eric: So how long have you been with Sonos?
[00:02:38] Gary: I've been with Sonos for well over two years. So it's been a great experience thus far.
[00:02:43] Eric: And were you in audio or electronics before that? How'd you wind up there?
[00:02:48] Gary: I worked at a company called Haywood industries that do pull products. And so I left as director of engineering for them, and I did an MBA towards the tail end and I, my, in my cohort, I had a couple supply chain folks in there and it just struck me as a way that I could stay within the technical realm without some of the product development from the design side challenges that I was just after 20 years, a bit tired of. And, it's been an amazing journey and the people that I work with now, we have amazing radio engineers and amazing product development, just all around and to be part of that is, is spectacular.
[00:03:32] Eric: So what was your undergrad before you did the MBA? Was your background electrical engineering?
[00:03:37] Gary: Yes, it was. So I did a lot of motor design before, when I came out of school, actually during school and out of school, I got to work in aerospace and aerospace is one of those places where. When you first get there. It's so awesome. It's it's exciting. But then you realize, wow, just keep doing like this one little, very narrow thing. But later on you realize the amount of rigor and depth and just discipline that you gain from that you'll apply that to the rest of your life. I'm very thankful. And I can honestly say that starting there has really impacted my work ever since I looked back at that and working on the triple seven of the latest Boeing and the high lift group there.
[00:04:21] So it was pretty cool. We got to do some cool things.
[00:04:23] Eric: Yeah, boy, there there's nothing like matters of literal life and death to make you pay attention to your designs.
[00:04:30] Gary:
[00:04:30] Yeah, for sure. The rinse, repeat, do it again. Did it fail the same way every time? And it was eight years of working on that program and it had started before I got there.
[00:04:42] So when you fly, you just realize how important and how amazing the reliability and the testing and the confidence that they have built into the machine is it's spectacular.
[00:04:55] Eric: It really reminds me of the human body, like the complexity of the number of things that could go wrong. It's a miracle. Every second, we stay in the air or keep breathing.
[00:05:07] Gary: You nailed it. The body. It just does it automatically. Most of the stuff, the most complex machines. So absolutely.
[00:05:16] Eric: So, where are you based? Are you in a Sonos office every day? Are you traveling
[00:05:20] Gary: I'm in Boston?
[00:05:22] Sonos has headquarters in Santa Barbara, but we also have the offices in Boston. And so that's my home base.
[00:05:30] We have. Equal lab capabilities in both. That's another really amazing place. We have a four PI chamber in there. If you've ever seen you go into these, you know what those are, because obviously you're doing sound, but it is amazing to go in there that floating floor. And it's so big.
[00:05:47] Eric: Wow. So what it is that you're doing product testing, frequency, response, things like that.
[00:05:54] Gary: Yes, absolutely. And we bring in our calibrated ears, so to speak and they test it and they really check and recheck and make sure we could get the signal processing just perfect at every frequency.
[00:06:10] Eric: Wow. So are you one of the people who loves the absolute lack of sound in there, or are you one of those people who feels that you could be driven insane if you spent more than a few seconds in there?
[00:06:22] Gary: I'm in the middle only because in aerospace, we used to have the EMI testing and stuff like that. So we had a room close to that, but this is absolute detached, so yeah. It is that the decibel loss, you feel your body it's, it is amazing. You warn people as you go in and don't turn too fast because you're losing your sensory perception change because you don't have references that you normally do that we take for granted.
[00:06:48] And I've seen people go in there, but me I'm okay. I can be fine.
[00:06:52] Eric: Yeah, but people get dizzy and disoriented. It's a real out-of-body experience. Yeah. Wow. Very cool. Let's talk a little bit about supplier visits and what else goes into selecting suppliers for the new technology being developed? Can you talk a little bit about how that process works?
[00:07:15] Gary: Sure. And I can talk about it in two forms, the pre pandemic and now pre pandemic was I think what most people envision of a supply meeting, right? It was a lot of folks sitting around a table, one side and making these promises and showing you, this is a real positive picture and taking what they say at face value and you pressure test a few things. You negotiate your price and then you leave in handshakes and then you let people come and do the formalization or you follow up with contracts, et cetera. Nowadays, that's very different. I think nowadays, because of just the many challenges that we are facing.
[00:07:58] Of course the relationships are important. There are always, they always will be important. However, the world being what it is and the third, second order, third order type things that some of these suppliers are facing. So you really have to get into the details of all of it. You can't take anything for granted, you want to understand their wafer situation.
[00:08:19] You need to understand how their backend and test facilities are doing because even if they have their stuff under control, movement control orders, and other challenges that are existing around the world can prevent a product that they've manufactured to a specification to get to me because nobody could pick it up or there's a variety of challenges.
[00:08:41] So making sure that you're taking that relationship and putting in then all of the right instruments that you can, you know, hopefully avoid the known knowables as I like to call it. That's really important.
[00:08:56] Eric: So are you looking up the supply chain from where they're sourcing their components as well?
[00:09:03] Gary: Yeah, you have to, and in many cases, sometimes that's a bit private or some of it is right.
[00:09:08] They don't like to divulge some of that information. So it does become a challenge at time, but then you rely on third-party information and you can try angulate your way to that. And the bottom line is how much risk are we willing to put ourselves in. And whereas before we had a handshake and we need to sign a piece of paper, now it's a handshake.
[00:09:30] You have to have your PO, you have to have your stuff ready to go because it's moving that fast. If one supplier goes down, another supplier has capacity and they're not constrained by the same challenges that supplier A is. Everybody's gonna try to figure that out and you really need to be first order.
[00:09:49] And so you have to definitely be well-prepared and move quickly,
[00:09:56] Eric: It feels like that really underscores the importance of that human relationship, too. Even though we're talking about supply chain, very practical things, it seems like the relationship with that person maybe is going to get you better information and more, more thorough information to really be able to vet them properly.
[00:10:18] Is that still the case, even though you're not able to sit in a room with that person this year.
[00:10:24] Gary: It is the case it's harder. Right. We speak more with our body language and then we do sometimes with our mouth. And so it does become difficult and that's where newer relationships certainly, are a challenge, but older ones, we can rely on certain previous engagements, but it's, yeah, it has been more difficult.
[00:10:45] And especially for companies take, for example, a Japanese company versus a Taiwanese, there's just certain ways that they believe and conduct their business. And so it's still trying to maintain and work within those it's been hard. It definitely is hard.
[00:11:02] Eric: Can you think of a specific example of that cultural difference, let's say whether it's between a Japanese company and a Taiwanese company that you could talk a little bit about in just some, put it in some cultural context,
[00:11:16] Gary: Culturally, for the Japanese. I think the Japanese companies are historically are very, they, when they make a commitment, they live to their commitment, they honor their commitment. They take their commitment very seriously being accurate and they will never say yes and let you down. But as you can appreciate this right. There's things that are out of all of our control that are affecting us.
[00:11:41] So while we totally agree and would love for us to be in it all the time, they're just factors that we can't get to. And so that, that does pose a bit of a challenge, right? So I think in some cases I've seen where they won't commit as early. And they'll always deliver they'll always over-deliver, but they'd rather under promise and then over deliver.
[00:12:04] But nonetheless, my business people don't want to hear that. No matter what I tell them what they're going to come through, they're going to come through. They want to see the part, they don't want to hear me. So that's just an example of that. And I think you could see those cultural differences that way.
[00:12:20] And then of course, there's hand signatures, some cultures, they, the formality of the agreement and signatures, titles, and levels, and making sure and ensuring that you have the right people and that's kind of hard and you know where you're doing it all over zoom. It's different. Those are just some of the things culturally that I think we've come across.
[00:12:41] In addition to the other pieces that we've had to change.
[00:12:45] Eric: Let's talk a little bit about the role evolving into an analytic driven role.
[00:12:52] Gary: So at a sourcing level, we're more at a strategic level and determining what suppliers we should be engaging with and putting in front of our product development teams and then from there, and making sure they're ethically correct and make sure that their products are good, all those things.
[00:13:07] So Sonos definitely has a very high regard for corporate social responsibility. It's something we really pride ourselves on and push that towards our suppliers. So that's first and foremost, you've got to pass those hurdles and I want you to get there as a sourcing manager. My role is to do the negotiations of contract, price, timing, et cetera.
[00:13:26] And then we have a material planning team that would do more of the tactical pieces. So I think what I say here in terms of analytically driven it's imperative for me to ensure that the things that I can control the allocation or split, which is the amount of material that I would be granting the supplier to sell to me, or we split those up depending on certain areas, some areas we have to sole source them, meaning there are others out there that can provide this, but I have to pick this one because to have multiple software may not allow it, or there may be other challenges.
[00:14:06] So going through all of them, So once you have that over your internal things that you can control, there's all of these external pieces that, how are they doing? How's this category as a whole, is the, are there wafer shortages and what's their node designing. And is that a constraint? I think there are similar to what you would, what other analysts do pick an industry, you know, the wall street, et cetera.
[00:14:32] You really have to use data to help form a picture and set those thresholds. And if you look at any one of the things onto themselves, they may not provide you that answer. But when you start putting data layers together into graph and a chart, it forms a picture and it tells you things that could be either risky or not so risky.
[00:14:58] And that another example is, okay, so the supplier is working to solve this part and what's the chances of them designing it. What's the next generation. Maybe there's something that I could bring to my design team that says, Hey, instead of using this. Maybe we should be looking at this one because that one's going to end of life soon, but we use tools like SiliconExpert to help us with that.
[00:15:20] Where is this thing in its design life cycle, that's, that's a great use of that. And so like again, just one piece of data and as an analyst would do you bring all those together and you've got to make a decision, but gone are the days where those decisions are, you are made without multiple aspects being considered.
[00:15:46] There are so many aspects to consider the, it seems like the volume of data that you've got to take into account is not just wide, but it's deep and presumably your timeline may not reflect that depth. Your timeline is still presumably driven by business decisions and you don't have the luxury of stretching this out forever to spend months or years vetting a supplier or a part.
[00:16:20] So how do you keep things moving quickly enough to keep up with the business needs?
[00:16:26] Getting involved early in programs is really helped set us up for success. There's no doubt about that. And when I first started, that was one of the areas that I knew was critical as a sourcing person, getting involved with our PD teams.
[00:16:45] And our program management teams and our, what we call product creation leaders. Those are the people that have their finger on, Hey, here's what we're going to do next. Here's what we're doing. Here's the timing and ensure that we're aligned there, because if we can align there, we can start the team off.
[00:17:00] We can avoid coming in at the end, being the armchair quarterback or Monday morning quarterback, wet blanket, whatever you want to call it and be like, sorry guys, you can't use that part. And it's something that was pretty knowable. Well, in order to not at all jeopardized the velocity of our development. And you can imagine being in a consumer product the velocity is high.
[00:17:22] It is tremendously important for us to get involved early. And I think that's one of the biggest pieces and bringing some of those. And then I'm not afraid to say it we're making the best educated guess, right. To put us in that position. That's all we can do and then be vigilant and stay on top of it.
[00:17:42] Because if there's one thing that we've all learned in throughout this pandemic is change is coming. Change is going to happen.
[00:17:50] Eric: No doubt. Have the pandemic related supply chain disruptions has that caused you to rethink how you source things. Does it cause you to seek components from. More than the typical number of vendors that might be supplying a part or other changes.
[00:18:11] Gary: Absolutely. We have had to rethink our, what we call allocation strategy. Our allocation strategy is definitely become more diverse, where again, where you try to get those very strong, deep relationships with suppliers. If that supplier has a problem. Unfortunately, you have a problem. And again, it's a give and take, but where necessary?
[00:18:33] So we have had to come up with different ways and creative ways of doing that. And I think we've been very successful at modifying our allocation strategy to allow more additional suppliers, which has also created for our case team, what we call our continuing sustaining engineering team. They've really been amazing.
[00:18:53] The by far really allowed the sourcing team to get creative, get parts, but there we've ended up with challenges there. So we've had to change like, so for example, if we are going to change to a different or add a different component into a build, one of the things that we. Have now committed to our case team is we need to make sure we have six months supply or visibility to supply because we've gotten into situations where they've qualified something only to find out that we didn't secure, or we lost the secure of a part.
[00:19:30] These resources are precious. And again, the opportunity costs of doing that. It just they're insurmountable. We really need to make sure that we're taking care of all of our Sonos resources, not just capital and the human resource has been very important. So, so yeah.
[00:19:46] Eric: Where do you think you all sit in terms of purchasing power with your suppliers?
[00:19:52] Is Sonos is such a, it's a household name from a consumer perspective, but I wonder where are you in the hierarchy of suppliers? Are you a powerful enough purchaser that you've you find that suppliers give you priority or are you somewhere in the middle?
[00:20:11] Gary: And that varies. And I'll tell you a couple interesting points on that one.
[00:20:16] We're certainly not a tier one as they call it manufacturer of cell phones. Those are all tier ones, but some of the other products out there that I'm sure that you either have, or are used, we're not there yet. But I will tell you in just the short period of time that I've been here, we have definitely improved our position and our ranking amongst the level.
[00:20:41] Whereas companies before I think we're taking a chance on Sonos because we were new. We were a startup. We didn't have as much purchasing power. And so as a result, we, we consolidated our spans. We bought a lot of reuse of our spend and as we've matured and we've now released many more products, we were releasing products faster that level and volume of purchasing that we do is gone way up.
[00:21:08] And so companies now are very attracted to Sonos because that name and that reputation, they definitely don't see us as the risk and we, we are for sure, putting ourselves in big positions, the there's a couple of companies that were small and we took a chance on them. And those companies now have gotten very large and never will forget and neither will we, there are certain categories that we have really worked a strong relationship and grown together.
[00:21:39] And I think for those type companies, Yes, we influence roadmap. We definitely get the priority, but there are others that we're just another number, another person. And that's not to say that we don't have a strong relationship with them. We're just not a tier one. And the orders of magnitude between us and some of these tier ones. That's how they make their money.
[00:22:03] Eric: It strikes me as you talk about working with in the early stages of the product development. I can't imagine how. You could do your job as effectively as you do without your engineering background. Is that common in, within your work group? Are the folks working with you and under you on your team?
[00:22:23] Do most of them also have that engineering background?
[00:22:27] Gary: Everybody I work with is very technically talented. I am unique in terms of the only one on the team that has a engineering degree, electrical engineering degree, and where it helps a lot is the efficiency at which I operate with my technical teams.
[00:22:45] And it's, it definitely is. A benefit. And I see it in the industry. If there's a lot of companies out there these days looking for sourcing managers with technical backgrounds. And I think it's a variety of things. I think it has to do with the disciplined approach that engineers to learn. And that's what we're taught, where we don't know everything, but we're taught how to solve problems and, and going about that in the systematic approach.
[00:23:11] Failure is not bad because technically you're learning just don't repeat them is really the key. And then it becomes a failure. Otherwise it's just, it's a learning the first time. It's a failure the second.
[00:23:24] Eric: Love that line. Let's talk a little bit more about product evolution from the direction. Of the consumer as a daily user of Sonos myself.
[00:23:38] One of the things I've really appreciated is the ability to immediately from the controller submit feedback to presumably the product design team. Talk to me a little bit about how consumer feedback has gone on to influence product innovation itself.
[00:24:00] Gary: It is our job to keep them happy and we have a very solid, strong following.
[00:24:05] So UX user experience is at the top and the forefront of how Sonos operates and the amount of rigor and thought that goes into the user experience is amazing. And it always makes me so happy when I'm traveling through an airport and I have my backpack that says Sonos on it. And somebody stops me and I might be all different ages of folks and everybody.
[00:24:32] They say I plugged that in. And I was able to operate that, or I had this one little issue and I hit that button and wow, you guys are amazing. And that's what we want. I think we want to make it appear so easy for the user and yeah. But when it's not working right to me. And I think Sonos is definitely ensuring that we're delivering on our commitments.
[00:24:56] And I think we want to work so hard and make it seem so seamless that a consumer. Just works. Just works.
[00:25:05] Eric: I wonder if it's a little bit of a double-edged sword, having such a passionate following people. Like I identify with Sonos that is part of my daily life and to be so integral. As part of so many people's daily life, we come to rely on our Sonos systems to work flawlessly.
[00:25:27] I can't get my kids to bed if I can't play them, the sleep story on the Play One in their room. So the expectation is so high.
[00:25:39] Gary: We recognize that, and we're not afraid of it. We have very talented, very amazing people that can and do and will continue to drive and make the product, everything that is expected of it and more.
[00:25:56] And we have an amazing roadmap the years to come and been amazing. Our CEO, Patrick Spence has been, he's been a really great leader. And he's definitely got us set up for tremendous success. So it's an exciting company. It's exciting time. And the pandemic has definitely really highlighted how much people are home and how important sound is.
[00:26:22] And we've definitely been humbled by that for sure.
[00:26:25] Eric: Speaking of being well, set up moving forward, are there efforts underway that you can talk about that pertain to upcoming enhancements and integration with newer technologies like wifi six and Bluetooth five one. Are there things you can talk about there that are in the world?
[00:26:46] Gary: I think in the works where your Sonos is always working to improve, to rethink reimagine, and bring that Sonos vibe to all parts of our life. Some of the things that we recently launched give you a great glimpse in the how Sonos has evolved. If you look at the product Roam that recently released, which is a portable small battery operated radio with both wifi, which is an amazing piece and it's waterproof and it's drop proof and that kind of stuff.
[00:27:21] So it definitely that out of home experience, people want that out of home experience. And we had a product that we launched last year, the year before called Move. Slightly bigger, amazing product. I love that product again, it's got waterproof rating, but Roam was the follow on to that. And so both of those allow you to be out and about, and the Roam is small enough where you can just put it in your backpack or your briefcase or something. And it's a fantastic small portable speaker that you can take on hike. If you're wherever I used mine at the beach recently. Absolutely fantastic. You can put it on the back of your chair. And it's awesome.
[00:28:04] Eric: I cannot tell you how heard I feel right now because of that, that has been something that I've thought so many times. I wish I could take my Sonos on vacation with me or to back to my hotel room. If I'm out on the road or. Whatever it might be. I've thought so many times. I wish it also had Bluetooth capability because it works so flawlessly at home.
[00:28:26] But when you're on the road, I gotta bring my crappy little Bluetooth speaker with me. And it's inevitably a horrible disappointment. So great news for me as a consumer.
[00:28:36] Gary: It's an amazing product. You won't be disappointed. It's it packs a punch. It's been designed with every bit of rigor we do all of our speakers . Both the Move and the Roam.
[00:28:46] Amazing speakers.
[00:28:48] Eric: Can you talk to us a little bit about roadblocks that you may have encountered? Not only internally, but with the suppliers specifically in light of the events of the last year and a half as we're coming out of this pandemic,
[00:29:00] Gary: We've definitely experienced lots of roadblocks and problems that have forced us to look at our practice, our processes, et cetera, but not only our own, this pandemic has definitely challenged things that we didn't think of before, within our suppliers, our suppliers also have learnings that they've undergone and areas that maybe we didn't understand very well or took for granted. It's applied, not just to Sonos specifically, but our partners.
[00:29:36] And so. We have had the, that I guess you would call double learning where we did everything we thought was right. And then all of a sudden they discovered that there's a problem there. There used to be somebody there. There used to be this there that's not there. Now we have to do something different.
[00:29:54] It's it's been definitely a job. So would we combat that? Bringing good people together? And really assessing the situation and understanding the things that we can. Again, things that we have pretty high confidence on and good, what we call a sources of truth. And then the others that maybe. Are okay. But the sources of truth or they're not there yet.
[00:30:19] And I think AI is one of them. I think the geopolitical risks that go on in the world are definitely something that you can in many cases use to, to determine where some of those roadblocks might pop up. I mentioned earlier, I think a movement control orders that exist in the world. Those are where in.
[00:30:42] Malaysia, for example, they put roadblocks, maybe they're trying to control the movement of traffic and people and getting to work sometimes can be difficult home from work and meet difficult because you're only allowed to move within certain areas. So then your, your labor force can't get to work effectively.
[00:31:00] So that interrupts the cycles. It's been amazing. And, but they post them in, but again, it's how quickly do you, do you use them? And one of the things that we. Been focusing on is exactly that. Okay. So an earthquake happens or something happens. That's terrible. We know that's terrible. Nonetheless, how quickly can we as an organization, figure out how or what that has affected the supply chain specific to Sonos and understanding where our foundries are.
[00:31:30] Or our suppliers foundries and pack houses and test houses. It really, it helps. And so AIs are able to gather this information and put it in our labs where we can definitely learn from it. And we can say, okay, Hey, yesterday there was a power outage at TSMC plant seven, it affected these lines, the power outage, which from this time to this time.
[00:31:53] Okay. Boom. I get a text message. Or an email and now I'm looking at, okay, how many parts do I have there? Oh, none that's a 20 nanometer or whatever. Okay. Not worried about it. Let's put that energy and effort into other places. So trying to continuously improve that and keep that vigilance is the areas that we've been able to evolve and change.
[00:32:16] So the hysterics and the concerns get addressed quickly. Right. That's really where we've been. Um, putting a lot of effort and led by the SiliconExpert group that we've been working with to design.
[00:32:30] Eric: When I think about geopolitical risk, I think about the, the obvious things like war zones or tariffs, but the scenarios you're describing are so much deeper than that and are seemingly so off of the radar, where do you source the information for something like a power outage at a supplier's factory?
[00:32:53] Gary: So I've been working with SiliconExpert. And they there's a team that I work with that is helping me develop that. And because their SiliconExpert is tied into a lot of the distribution network.
[00:33:07] And so it has AI capabilities that they it's a new group that they've they've formed. I've been working with them to hone this process and this geopolitical risk. So, yeah, right now we have event anything from disease, obviously droughts, factory fires. We even have one in their port disruptions, just in case who would have ever predicted that a ship would have blown sideways and blocks the canal. So power outages, and then the unknown. It's just, we know that nobody's there and we know that it's closed or we know there was a disruption and trying to really assess what to do following those events. AI is definitely coming a long way. We have geo risk scores that we're applying to our designing and putting limits.
[00:34:01] So okay. If these conditions exist, it's at a high level, low level. And then as a sourcing person, I need to sort through the noise I need to get as they used to call it. The wheat from the chaff, I think is what they used to say. Combining corners. I just want to, I just need to like so very colorful, very easy, right?
[00:34:21] It's bad green is don't, let's not worry about it. The yellow and orange. Hey, maybe we should, but there's a potential risk. It's possible. If I'm not mistaken when we had. Several years ago when supply chain was disrupted, it was MOSFET. It was a specific product category. And at that time it seemed like everybody was caught helpless and hit the stub, their toe on the Ottoman, so to speak and where we are today is we need, we can't afford to be in another MOSFET. The situation whereby you know, the industry was really challenged to, to get supply of MOSFETs. And what we're doing now are all the things that we wound up managing our way through MOSFETs we're doing in advance to manage our way around MOSFET challenge paying attention to, Hey, are we overly sourced are allocated on a particular process node. What's the industry doing to what's the industry's capacity within certain nodes. All of these things are known knowables, and, but they're not served up to you on a silver platter. You have to go find these and my colleague, he always says his Spidey sense. And our job right now is to be doing more than Spidey sense it's to bring the evidence-based knowledge and evidence-based positions to provide to our business leaders as to why we should or should not be making a move. And I think that's what we're after now and having the right intelligence and data feeds to start putting this picture together is what we're talking about. And that is absolutely our job as a manager is not to manage through the crises it's to manage or avoid the crisis altogether. And in many aspects, that's where we've really placed a lot of the effort. And if tasks, because yeah, If we're managing through problems, it means we didn't avoid them.
[00:36:36] And while equally as important. And, but it should not be the norm. The norm should be managing our way around, not through. And so I think that's where we, what we're building the processes we've changed. I think that's how you can summarize all of that. Whereas again, I think you can look back at history.
[00:36:55] There's been many episodes of things that have occurred that you can look back and we don't want to be looking back to learn. We're trying to experience it and learn as it's happening. And of course we can't predict everything, but the things we can predict we're trying to, and the object is to be less wrong, I think.
[00:37:14] And it sounds funny, but that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to be less wrong today than we were yesterday. And tomorrow we're going to be less wrong than we were today. And how are we doing it? We're, we're slowly but surely increasing our chances and probabilities of understanding data and understanding the inputs that we have in front of us and going and getting those that we don't have and understanding which ones those are.
[00:37:43] Eric: Thank you so much for a great discussion, Gary. We really appreciate you being with us today.
[00:37:49] Gary: I thank you very much. It was a great pleasure. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
[00:37:56] Eric: I'd like to thank our audience for tuning in to this episode of the SiliconExpert, Intelligent Engine. Be sure to tune in for new episodes that will delve into more of the electronics industry.
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