Microboard, a family-owned electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider based in Connecticut, has doubled in size over the past four years by focusing on high-complexity, low-volume production for a select group of customers. Central to their success has been a strategic approach to digital transformation, with strategic equipment partnerships, particularly the inspection partnership with Koh Young, playing a critical enabling role. The company maintains exceptional quality metrics (99% first pass yield, <0.1% RMA rate) while producing 40,000-50,000 printed circuits board assemblies each month.

1. Mission-Driven Manufacturing
2. Complexity as Competitive Advantage
3. Quality Excellence Through Strategic Inspection
4. The Koh Young Partnership
5. Digital Transformation: Fingertip Data
6. The AI Vision: From Reactive to Proactive
7. Growth with Purpose
8. Key Lessons
9. Conclusion

Mission-Driven Manufacturing

When visitors tour Microboard’s Connecticut facility, they immediately notice something different. “Right after COVID, we started inviting customers back in, and they were all saying to me, there’s something different. Your employees are happy, they’re engaged,” explains Nicole Russo, CEO and Owner. “And I say, Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?”

Founded 43 years ago by Craig Hokenga, the company operates on two premises: build the most leading-edge technology while helping those least fortunate. This dual mission, inspired by God, has enabled the company to install over 1,200 water wells, impacting over seven million livers in regions affected by conflict and poverty worldwide.

“Brilliant together is our theme of the business,” Nicole notes. “We reward employees for bringing us problems. I think they feel very open and welcome.” This culture is not just good for morale—it is essential for attracting and retaining the talent needed to handle extreme manufacturing complexity.

Complexity as Competitive Advantage

Unlike many EMS providers chasing volume, Microboard has deliberately limited its customer base numbers, currently below twenty, with plans to grow slowly. “We are not chasing revenue,” Nicole states clearly. This strategic focus allows the company to tackle what others avoid.

“We’re about 65% DOD on the sales side,” Nicole explains. “We see projects from low complexity—things like water alarm systems—to mid-complexity medical products, and then very high complexity. We are very sought after for RF and bleeding-edge technology.”

Bryce Poland, Vice President of Quality and Continuous Improvement, describes the operational reality: “At Microboard, our bread and butter is the more complex boards. We have a small customer base where we pride ourselves in really being strong partners. We’re helping them with NPIs, which creates unique challenges because we’re not seeing the same thing over and over again.”

The technical demands are staggering. “We have boards that have five, six, seven, eight thousand components on each side, the size of a letter,” Bryce notes. “We’re getting down to so many 0201s. We’re not yet to the 01005s, but we see it in our future.”

Wayne Ellis, Vice President of Supply Chain, adds another layer: “A lot of the products we’re building were designed 20, 30 years ago. So, you’re dealing with obsolete components that are extremely hard to get.” This combination of legacy designs, cutting-edge technology, obsolescence management, and extreme miniaturization creates complexity that few manufacturers can navigate.

Quality Excellence Through Strategic Inspection

To deliver on these demanding requirements, Microboard has built its quality system around comprehensive in-process inspection, achieving 99% first pass yield at final inspection and less than 0.1% RMA rate from approximately 500,000 printed circuit board assemblies per year.

“We look at inspection as a very critical component of what we do,” Bryce emphasizes. “We do 100% inspection of everything that goes out the door, but we can’t rely on people to catch everything. In order to achieve our quality metrics, we have to have very strong in-process inspection capabilities.”

The foundation is solder paste inspection. “Because we do complex boards, the solder print is extremely important—if you don’t get that right, nothing happens after that,” Bryce explains. “We make a lot of investment in our equipment, our AOI machines, our X-ray machines, our solder paste inspection, as well as our functional test. Maintaining a partnership with the suppliers and knowing what capabilities are out there, as well as what’s up and coming, helps us know when to make that next investment.”

The Koh Young Partnership

For Microboard, equipment suppliers are more than vendors—they are strategic partners. “Our existing equipment is Koh Young, and we’ve had a very strong track record with that equipment,” Bryce reports. “So now we’re looking to invest again. Koh Young has been extremely helpful in providing the information we need, what is next on the horizon, their product offerings, what differentiates them from others.”

The partnership extends beyond equipment purchases. “Koh Young has a wealth of knowledge as far as what’s there currently as well as what is potentially upcoming,” Bryce continues. “We’ve talked about the AI capabilities of not just the solder paste inspection, but also how that feeds into the AOI equipment and how it feeds into the placement equipment.”

Lee Kemper, Executive Vice President of Operations, describes how these partnerships integrate into Microboard’s operational philosophy: “Where we take our first step is always with people. We’ve got to have the right talent. And then it drives down to process talking with the Koh Young team, making sure we have the right technical equipment available in the market to get us where we need to be. And then we drive that with systems. So, we take a very holistic approach.”

This approach requires frequent collaboration. “Koh Young is here quite often,” Lee explains. “With a lot of our growth focused on very complex products, we really want to make sure that our partners are in quite often, identifying the new technology, the latest and greatest things.”

Digital Transformation: Fingertip Data

Microboard’s approach to digital transformation is pragmatic and focused on operational value. Lee, who oversees manufacturing, engineering, facilities, and IT, emphasizes actionable intelligence: “When you look at our shop floor, everything has inputs and outputs. How do we best leverage those IOs to convert that to good data? I call that fingertip data—how do we give folks fingertip data to make the best decision at that moment? That’s the real key because data in itself, we generate a ton of it. It’s how you synthesize that down to what operators can make a decision on.”

The company takes a “fast follower” approach to new technology. “We definitely don’t want to be bleeding or cutting edge. We want to be fast followers,” Lee states. “If the technology’s there, we can get in and leverage that quickly. We take a three-year approach on everything—people, IT and systems, processes, as well as our CapEx plan.”

Bryce, with a decade of experience leading Industry 4.0 initiatives, brings valuable perspective: “When I hear AI, you wonder what’s behind that. AI is a marketing phrase, and I don’t get too hung up on that, but really, it’s what capability is being provided. There are different suppliers out there that may call it all AI, but it really comes down to what is the offering, what is the capability.”

The AI Vision: From Reactive to Proactive

While pragmatic about AI adoption, Microboard has a clear vision for transformation. “Right now, I would say we’re reactive,” Bryce explains. “The equipment gives us information, we analyze it, and we figure something out as quickly as possible to adjust the lines for not making defects, and then give feedback to the customer or engineering to make it better.”

The future is proactive, inline recommendations. “Where I see AI being very powerful is if it can do inline recommendations, be more proactive,” Bryce envisions. “To say at solder SPI, we’re seeing something. Or at AOI, we’re seeing some shift. So now we can push that back to SMT placement or push it back to our printer. And then help with the programming, help with setup, maybe even eventually recommendations. I would love to see more recommendations to help the operators and maybe eventually even take that decision.”

However, Microboard’s approach is shaped by their business reality. With 65% of revenue from Department of Defense contracts, ITAR compliance is paramount. “We do a lot of ITAR work,” Wayne notes. “We’re proceeding slowly because of the risks of information getting out. We’re starting to see end customers saying you’re not allowed to use AI in any portion of our product.”

“We’re looking to be fast followers,” Bryce adds. “We’ll do a pilot, sure, but we’re going to let it get proved out somewhere else. Here we invest in equipment, we invest in people, and we’re ready to do it. Fast follower.”

Growth with Purpose

As Microboard looks to the future, the challenge is scaling while maintaining what makes the company special. “I’m just so proud of the people we have here,” Nicole reflects. “It took me a little while coming through COVID building this management team. So, we’re ready. We’re ready to take this company to the next level. We’re ready for that second site.”

But growth will not come at any cost. “We’re still small compared to many, but we’re mighty in the way we deliver our services,” Nicole emphasizes. “I want to keep doing what we’re doing. I don’t want to lose the mission work; I don’t want to lose the family culture. There will be no private equity in here. We will conservatively grow the company by adding another six to eight customers over the next three to five years.”

Lee describes growth as creating opportunity: “Growth is the engine for that. Growth creates opportunity for folks, like we had when we were young in our career. We want to be able to drive that environment for them to thrive.”  Microboard invests highly in its career development initiatives externally through strategic partnerships with local high schools and universities to establish student chapter clubs through the Electronics Foundation, university scholarships, and sought-after summer internships. Internally, Microboard stays committed to career advancement through robust cross-training and mentorship programs.

The humanitarian mission remains a powerful recruiting tool. “Folks come here, that’s what they’re connected to,” Lee observes. “There’s a strong connection to doing things greater than ourselves. And it just happens to be in electronic manufacturing services.” The connection can be felt close to home, too. Microboard’s participation in local missions like Step Up for the Brave and Mission 22: Hike to Heal reaffirms Microboard’s commitment to helping veterans struggling with homelessness and mental illness.

Key Lessons

Microboard’s journey offers several lessons for EMS providers navigating digital transformation:

• Strategic Focus Creates Opportunity – By deliberately limiting customer count and focusing on high-complexity work, Microboard has carved out a defensible market position that allows for deeper partnerships with both customers and technology suppliers.
• Culture Enables Technology – The company’s humanitarian mission, transparent communication, and collaborative culture create an environment where employees embrace rather than resist technological change.
• Partnership Over Transactions – Equipment suppliers like Koh Young are treated as strategic partners, with frequent collaboration on roadmaps and technology planning, ensuring investments align with future needs.
• Pragmatic Innovation – The “fast follower” strategy and focus on “fingertip data” demonstrate that digital transformation requires being thoughtful about what creates operational value, not being first.
• Quality Through Prevention – Exceptional quality metrics (99% FPY, <0.1% RMA) stem from comprehensive in-process inspection rather than end-of-line sorting, requiring investment in equipment like Koh Young’s SPI and AOI systems but delivering measurable ROI.

Conclusion

Microboard’s digital transformation journey demonstrates that success in modern electronics manufacturing requires more than just technology investments. It demands a holistic approach that integrates people, processes, equipment, and systems—all grounded in a clear strategic vision and strong organizational culture.

The company’s partnership with Koh Young exemplifies how equipment suppliers can be true enablers of transformation when relationships move beyond transactions to strategic collaboration. As Microboard prepares for its next phase of growth, the foundation built through these partnerships positions the company to scale complexity without sacrificing quality or culture. “Brilliant together is our theme,” Nicole reminds us. In Microboard’s case, that theme extends beyond internal collaboration to encompass customers, suppliers, and the communities they serve worldwide. It’s this broader definition of success—technological excellence in service of human flourishing—that may be the company’s most important lesson for the industry.

For more information about Koh Young’s inspection solutions and how they can enable your digital transformation journey, visit www.kohyoungamerica.com.

Learn more about Microboard and how you and they could be Brilliant Together at www.microboard.com.