Moore's Lobby Podcast

Passing Storm or New Normal? How Should We Think of Today’s Electronics Supply Chain?

Episode #56 / 1:09:00 / November 22, 2022 by Daniel Bogdanoff
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Episode Sponsor: Mouser Electronics

Join leading electronics industry experts from Mouser, XTG, and MacroFab as we discuss the state of the supply chain, the hottest trends in business and technology, where we are headed, and how we can all work together more efficiently.

In this panel discussion from Industry Tech Days 2022, we get to hear from three industry leaders: 

You don’t thrive in the turmoil of the electronics industry without seeing challenges as opportunities. This is evident throughout this discussion. Misha Govshteyn demonstrated this attitude as he reflected on the last couple of years:

"It's messy, but I got to be honest with you. I love It. We're in wartime mode, and I think we're trying to build a very different model for how to build product and how to do manufacturing. Believe it or not, it's actually very difficult to do without a crisis."

Jeff Newell also has a lot of positive things to say about the unique opportunities of our current situation, including:

"If you give the engineers time to really think and create versus having to go to meetings and some of the overhead things associated with working in an office environment, I think we're going to see a lot of cool things come out of that environment…I think the number of new products is going to accelerate as we get through the next few years. If I were an engineer in today's world, I'd be very excited about that."

This is a spirited discussion, and everyone from executives to engineers and students can learn something from it. Our Moore’s Lobby host, Daniel Bogdanoff, leads a discussion that includes:

  • Gray and black market products and their relation to e-waste
  • Component engineers? What are they and why your company might need them
  • Why EE hardware engineers might be undervalued in the market
  • Advice for early career and student engineers

 

A Big Thank You to Our Sponsors! 

 

 

About Our Panelists

Michael Knight

Michael Knight is the President of the eXponential Technology Group (XTG) and Corporate Senior Vice President of Business Development at TTI, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary. Michael has worked in the electronic components industry, beginning at Western Microtechnology, a pioneer in semiconductor distribution. He has various national and global leadership roles in sales, marketing, operations, and general management; in both private and public companies. 

 

 

Michael has a long history of service on the boards of directors for several of the associations that support the industry. He currently serves on the advisory board for the Women in Electronics Association. He is also a member of the board of directors of Macrofab.

 

Jeff Newell

Jeff Newell is Mouser Electronics’ Senior Vice President of Products where he is responsible for supplier relationship management and engagement globally, pricing and inventory activities for those suppliers, and oversight of Mouser’s Technical Support team.

He joined Mouser in 2013 after 22 years at Texas Instruments in a variety of sales, marketing and operations roles. His last role at TI was Director of Sales Operations in the Americas, which included managing TI’s distribution network and strategy, direct customer inside sales and service efforts, and the company’s product information center.

 

 

Jeff holds a BSEE from Kansas State University and an MBA from Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business. He is a proponent of authorized distribution, spending time on the former National Electronic Distributors Association (NEDA) board of directors and as part of the team that created what is now the Electronic Component Industry Association (ECIA).

 

Misha Govshteyn 

Since 2018, Misha Govshteyn has served as CEO at MacroFab, the world’s first full-service PCBA (PCB assembly) cloud platform. Macrofab has a network of electronics manufacturing factories across North America.  

 

 

Prior to MacroFab, Misha co-founded Alert Logic and helped build it into one of cybersecurity's largest SaaS companies. While serving as Alert Logic’s founder, CEO, CTO, and CSO, he led several R&D, security research, and corporate development efforts, helping the company become a pioneer in cloud security for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Through Techstars, he has mentored several successful startups, primarily in product and go-to-market strategies.