Steve DeWaters

Steve DeWaters is president of Penumbra Strategies, a strategy and technology consulting firm specializing in defense electronics and helping companies enter and sustain business in defense electronics.

Steve is a frequent speaker on various topics in the defense sector and he has worked with a variety of industry employers and clients ranging from EMS providers Viasystems, EPE Corp, Key Electronics, Sanmina-SCI, Flextronics, Celestica, Benchmark Electronics and Plexus to defense-based vendors and suppliers and prime contractors such as BAE Systems, ATK, Teledyne, and Amphenol, to name a few.

Steve has senior level defense-related industry experience with supply chain purchasing and procurement functions as well as outsourcing contract service agreement negotiations and he has intimate familiarity with vendors and suppliers providing integrated circuits; printed circuit boards and printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA), sheet metal fabrication and enclosures, and software licensing.

Steve earned a bachelor of arts at U.C. Irvine where his senior thesis involved creating highly predictive organizational behavior models. He is a member of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Assoc. (AFCEA), National Contract Management Assoc. (NCMA), HANSCOM Air Force Base Representatives Assoc., National Defense Industrial Assoc. (NDIA), and Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP). He lives in Bedford, NH with his wife and four daughters.

EMS companies I have worked with

Numerous....of every size and stripe across North America

The skills I often see lacking in the EMS industry today

Strategy formation, succession planning, intelligent hiring practices

What I think about some of the emerging EMS markets or regions

The fringe between EMS and IP is getting very tenuous...it's becoming a blurry landscape

What I think about low-cost manufacturing

It's relative, changing, and will become a moving target. China will not remain the 'be all and end all' location forever...'maybe sooner than people tend to believe.

My thoughts on what makes a good program manager

A business counterpart to the purchasing organization; NOT a materials expeditor...

A book I recommend to others or am currently reading

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

If I could travel back in time and witness any event one would be

Alexander the Great's taking of Persepolis

One of my favorite quotes

"Learning is not Complusory" W. Edwards Deming

Someone I would most like to sit next to at a dinner party

Vernon Walters....a brilliant, obscure, roving ambassador who spoke 7 languages fluently and was one of the most influential ‘behind the scenes’ people in U.S. history.

Some of the countries I have visited for work or play

Italy, Ireland, England, Canada, Mexico, Grand Cayman, France, Germany

The ultimate consumer electronics product I would still like to see developed

A teleportation device that - with the click of a button - eliminates the need for air travel...