Enics’ mission to orchestrate the ecosystem

“Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) has not always been perceived as the most exciting industry,” says Elke Eckstein. But in the advent of digitalization, automation, and robotization, no one can dispute it’s a fast-paced, competitive, and thrilling place to be in now. As President and CEO of Enics, one of the largest EMS providers in the world in the Industrial Electronics segment, Eckstein is overseeing the development of the Enics Life platform, which stands to catapult the company into a new trajectory that could change the entire industry.

Eckstein discusses how Enics will achieve this, through a combination of predictive, data-driven services, even more digitalization, and above all, the know-how of its workforce.

EE: Our Enics test systems collect data in the cloud and enable automated data and analytics for quality and process monitoring and control. Our systems also have self-learning capabilities to enable automated repairs and preventative corrections to avoid failures in the manufacturing process.

Our customers and partners can access our cloud-based services via the Enics Life platform, where we share component data and make alternative component suggestions. This has proven extremely important because of COVID-related shortages across the entire component industry. With Enics Life, we can coordinate and share product change notices (PCNs) and product discontinuation notices (PDNs) and ensure our customer product teams find the best solutions for customers. That is unique in the industry.

EE: To move up the value chain we must build a pervasive, customer-to-customer platform and clearly for that, we need more brains and more software. As we move up the value chain, that transition will be based on the Enics Life platform. Customers, suppliers, and partners will be able to hop in the platform and take the data they need for their operations. We will need more software and skilled workers when it comes to the orchestration of the supply chain, because our platform will become even bigger and create a new ecosystem for the value chain.