Costa Rica Manufacturing Momentum: with Stephan Weiss, CEO at Zollner Electronics Inc.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (0:07)

Hello, I'm Philip Stoten. I'm at the inauguration of the second Zollner facility here in Costa Rica, and I'm joined by Stephan Weiss, who is now CEO for the Americas.

Stephan, when you look at the development, and I think you've been in the Americas, or in the US for 15 years now. When you look at that timeframe, you're initially moving into Milpitas, then building the first facility here, the other acquisitions, the facility in Fremont, the addition of the second facility now here. It's been a pretty exciting ride and a pretty impressive growth.

Stephan Weiss (0:46)

Yeah, I think exciting ride describes it the best. So we started small with Milpitas facility in Silicon Valley. We expended there, then we brought this here alive, and what we're seeing is just a tremendous opportunity, like really good growth, customer very happy, and there's going to be a lot more what we can do right now.

I think this is the next step stone, but we're seeing already the next advancements, what we could do in a couple of years from now. I think we're going to expand again.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (1:19)

Yeah. What I think is really interesting, when we first met in that Silicon Valley facility, it was very much building the base there and using that as a gateway to other manufacturing. When you talk to customers and say, hey, let's talk about moving this product that's growing in volume to Costa Rica, what's their first reaction? Are they surprised you're here?

Stephan Weiss (1:43)

So the initial reaction is Costa Rica. We had a vacation there. So this is always the initial reaction. At the beginning, it's an uphill battle to sell that.

But when you get the customer in the door here, and when they get to meet the people and see how organized it is, how clean it is, how clean, how experienced the people are, their engineering talent and the can-do attitude what they have here, every customer is sold. As soon as you get them here, I only hear good feedback afterwards. But the first initial step to get them here, that's the one.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (2:22)

It's a big one, isn't it? So when you come down here, are you blown away by the talent? I mean, when you think of that 10 years, academia has really stepped up, the relationship Zollner has built with the local universities has been important. But it feels like they really do have people that have got that candor approach, but also that engineer approach to fix stuff which really fits Zollner's DNA.

Stephan Weiss (2:49)

So we had the basics in 2014 already, where we saw they have a lot of strong engineering background, but it was not at the point where it is right now.

What we saw back then was you have to teach them really everything from EBC on Contract Manufacturing on EMS. But now, 10 years later, 12 years later, they have the ins and outs. They know it very well. We have critical mass on people that it just continues.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (3:17)

So you can train locally.

Stephan Weiss (3:19)

We can train locally. Then what we see around the facility here now is a pool of talent in the universities, and they're really stepping it up on the engineering side of it. Now, they also want to go into more science and more advanced technologies. So this is perfect for us, because we are known for the more complex meatronics assemblies where we really need that kind of talent, and it fits just very, very well.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (3:46)

Yeah, and it's exciting to see the engineering department here really step up and be really creative in the way they're solving customer problems and improving the way customers products are manufactured, making them perhaps more economic, also more reliable, higher quality.

And now to know that engineering team is going to get more space and is actually going to be the center of excellence for the whole of the Americas. That's pretty satisfying.

Stephan Weiss (4:11)

No, I really, really love that. Because we showed some really interesting things in the US, where we did a little bit of automation, robotics, AI, of course. But now having Costa Rica growing exactly in that spot so much, it's just a tremendous opportunity for us. They're going to become the backbone of engineering in the Americas. We already have now the partnership established into the US plans. We bring the Costa Rica team up there to do 5S, Lean, Kaizen, robotics, automation projects. The collaboration will be great and the talent would you sometimes cannot get in US, you will put here and then bring to US, and then train as well in US.