Suzanne Schumacher has over 30 years of experience in manufacturing. Suzanne is currently the VP of Global Manufacturing at F5, a multi-cloud application security and delivery company. She pivoted to networking electronics after starting her career in aerospace at Crane Aerospace and Electronics, ThyssenKrupp Aerospace, and GE Aviation. Suzanne’s diverse experience across aerospace and defense (A&D) and networking electronics provides unique insights into what operations leaders in both industries can learn from each other – particularly when it comes to working with manufacturing partners at scale.
Best Practices for Establishing Oversight with Manufacturing Partners
How Networking Electronics Companies Can Optimize Partnerships with Contract Manufacturers
Most networking equipment brands do not operate their own factories – they partner with contract manufacturers (CMs) to assemble their products. CMs help businesses quickly scale to mass production through established facilities, experienced engineers, and relationships with suppliers, allowing companies like F5 to focus their resource investments on their competitive differentiation in technology and product offerings.
Suzanne believes that CMs can be great partners, but that “partnering with a CM comes with its own challenges.” CMs have the equipment and processes in place that allow a brand to scale its products quickly, but when it comes to monitoring quality, the factories might not be able to provide the kind of data a company expects. When something goes wrong, that lack of visibility can make it harder to understand the underlying cause.
Suzanne has learned that while CMs are partners in quality, quality assurance is ultimately the brand’s responsibility. Companies must remain involved. “I own quality,” she emphasized. “You can’t really be hands off, or things will drift. Things will change. If you stop watching, something will escape. You can’t just say ‘I’m paying the CM to care about it.’ Oversight is critical.” Product assembly can be influenced by a number of unexpected factors: issues with upstream components, operators who need retraining, or even challenging design. The only unifying factor across all of these variables is the brand itself, and the team that owns the product.
Companies looking to maximize their partnerships with CMs need to establish regular communication practices and develop a shared sense of reality from the data. Why? “Inefficiencies on their end will come through in different types of indirect costs, and it’s important you understand them,” Suzanne explained. Improvements you can glean from data enable you to improve the design and process, which saves both parties money.
Unique Challenges for Aerospace and Defense Partnerships
A&D, on the other hand, is a highly regulated industry that relies heavily on domestic, in-house manufacturing. “When you have your own operating facilities, you have access to all of your data,” because it’s from your systems, she explained. This is an obvious boon when it comes to monitoring quality, but isn’t without its own downsides: sunk costs in facilities, equipment, and staff. That makes expansion and scale a challenge.
In the aerospace context, Suzanne learned to rely on CMs for parts and subassemblies, like printed circuit boards. This allows companies doing their own manufacturing to focus on final assemblies, testing, validation, and inspection. It allows them to protect trade secrets and maintain regulatory compliance. Suzanne found that outsourcing subassemblies and individual components to CMs is an effective way for companies to expand their business without expanding their footprint, but acknowledged that organizations who are used to keeping everything in-house may initially lack an understanding of the best practices involved in working with manufacturing partners.
From Manufacturing Oversight to Insight with Data and AI
One of the biggest differences Suzanne observed between aerospace and networking electronics is how easily she could access manufacturing data. “When you have your own operating facilities, any data you want or processes you want to look at, you have access to it because you own it.” But with Contract Manufacturers (CMs), it can be more challenging to collect data and understand whether there are difficulties with processes. Companies may get data from their CMs that is different than what they expect and may face challenges in understanding how to get better results.
To avoid blindspots in their manufacturing process, Suzanne led the implementation of a comprehensive data and AI program at F5 to drive operational improvements and efficiencies. Leveraging AI has improved their efficiency and had a measurable business impact.
Trust Where You Are Going
Suzanne’s extensive experience highlights the nuanced differences and shared challenges among electronics companies across multiple verticals. Despite their differences, both benefit significantly from robust data collection and AI-driven insights to enhance quality and efficiency.
From our conversation with Suzanne, it’s clear that her quest for data is driven from her focus and philosophy as a leader – one centered around truth and trust. “It’s really important your team has trust in leadership,” Suzanne said. “If you made a decision that wasn’t great, own it. Building influential leadership is really key. You want people to follow because they trust where you’re going.”
