Oliver Mihm, Plexus

Hi, I'm Oliver Mihm. I'm the Vice President of Global Engineering Solutions with Plexus. By way of context, Plexus is a product realization services provider, so that includes doing the upfront conceptualization design work, commercialization, manufacturing products, providing fulfillment strategies, and then sustaining solutions once the product's in the marketplace. We partner with a lot of OEMs on various product development efforts. I'm specifically focused more on that upfront concept design and commercialization piece by being part of the engineering organization. Historically, we had seen OEMs be very focused on what requirements they want that product to meet, very focused on the opinion of the product line manager and on the economic buyer. What we're seeing today is a much greater shift towards needing to pull in end user needs, or even how the product is going to be sustained in the marketplace once it's been deployed to the marketplace. There's a recognition that with time to market pressures today, the product development cycle has to be efficient. The key piece is instead of waiting till later in the cycle to pull those needs in, we're recognizing that upfront during that conceptualization, you've got to go out there, you've got to meet the end user, you've got to pull those requirements in, make that a firm piece of the trajectory of the intended goal for that particular product, and that's going to create a product that's going to be much more successful in the marketplace.