“Include work culture that respects age”

David Heller, Chief Executive Officer of Heller Industries, states that Heller designs and manufactures standard and semi-custom soldering and epoxy cure ovens used to assemble electronic circuits, discrete electronic devices, and semiconductor packages. There are three primary locations: Florham Park, New Jersey; Sewon, South Korea; and Shanghai, China. These locations are staffed with administration, sales, service, engineering, and accounting staff. All machines are manufactured in Suwon and Shanghai.

David’s primary role is to define culture as well as allocate resources. The culture embodies core attributes of energy, enthusiasm, and engagement. He created close relationships with customers and always accepted challenges to improve products and the organization. The tone of organization is constant improvement. No matter how good current machines or organization, they are continually being reengineered and improved. He likes to say yes to every customer request but, occasionally, decides that he simply cannot meet customer expectations in the required timeframe.

International teamwork and problem solving are critical parts of our company’s culture, says David. We are on call most mornings and evenings with our team members around the globe working on problems as a "single mind". Positions within the organization are irrelevant during these problem-solving calls. All opinions are solicited, considered, and argued. This is particularly challenging in Confucian cultures, where respect and deference are automatically given to older, more senior team members. When we opened our remote factory in Korea in the early 2000s, I explained to our two new senior managers that, "It is better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission." They understood the freedom to act, David adds.

For David, the company’s successful formula of working closely with leading customers on semi-custom process heating machines within the electronics assembly and semicon packaging industries, will remain the same in the future. We also work to make doing business with us as easy as possible to further reduce any incentive for our customers to look elsewhere. the largest engineering team in our industry niche in order to provide rapid response to customer’s challenges. What will change in the future be the composition of our company, says David. Many of the people who joined our company at the beginning of their careers in the early and mid-1980s will be retiring over the next 10 years. Our challenge will be to recruit and train the next generation of outstanding process heating technologists.

One of our customers needed hundreds of curing machines during the spring of 2021. We rented and facilitized a nearby building in Shanghai, then trained over 100 assemblers and field service engineers. We also worked with our subcontractors to ramp up their capacity. We delivered all of these units on time. In the winter of 2009, one of our semiconductors was having trouble washing flux chemistry out of their tightly packed advanced technology chip. We proposed the use of formic acid gaseous flux, a technology that we pioneered in the mid ‘90s, instead of liquid flux to avoid the need for water washing. Six years later, that customer put this technology into production. Formic acid soldering is now used by a variety of semiconductor back-end manufacturers for their advanced, high-density packages.

Finally, when questioned about coaching business owners, David said entrepreneurs are naturally impatient and motivated to change the status quo. Be patient, as difficult as that might be. With experience and a fully developed team, change and growth will become easier. The world will seek you out rather than you having to push your way in. A second thought is the importance of deferring gratification. Nothing more strongly correlates to long-term success than the ability to continue to work hard, remain focused, and defer gratification. This notion could be translated into the maxims of aiming to get rich slowly, staying with your project for the long term rather than cashing out at the first opportunity, and never quitting, just finding a different way.