What Happens When Every Action Becomes A Data Point: EMS@C-Level with FermionX MD Will Patrick

Sitting down at FermionX with Managing Director Will Patrick, we explore how a third-generation MD took a family electronics manufacturer from tribal knowledge to a data-first operation that customers can see, trust, and scale with.

We start with the lineage—granddad’s silkscreen craft evolving to PCBs, then assembly—and why honoring that service and customer focussed ethic made the transformation stick. Then we lift the hood on the digital rebuild: a modern MES for full traceability, powerful dashboards for top-level clarity, and smarter quality tooling including Koh Young's KSMART and Luminovo. The goal wasn’t technology for its own sake; it was a single source of truth where every action leaves a data point and every decision gets faster, cleaner, and easier to audit.

From there, we talk growth. By redesigning processes and floor layout, Will has created headroom to push from around £10M to £25M without stacking overhead. We break down how visibility wins contracts in the EMS world, why customers value shared dashboards and live traceability, and how a long-term, 20–30 year plan changes which investments make sense today. We also get practical about AI: exception-driven MRP alerts, machine feedback loops, and agentic systems that surface the one issue that will derail tomorrow—after, and only after, the data foundation is solid.

If you care about scaling a contract manufacturer without losing your soul—or your margins—you’ll find concrete steps here: where to start with MES, how to drive cultural adoption, which metrics to watch, and how to stitch tools together so operators move faster, not slower. Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of manufacturing, data, and leadership, and tell us what you'd automate first.

EMS@C-Level is hosted by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Global Electronics Association (https://www.electronics.org)

You can see video versions of all of the EMS@C-Level pods on our YouTube playlist.

Transcript

Philip Stoten, Journalist and Podcaster 0:08

Hello, I'm Philip Stoughton. I'm at Fermionics in the UK, and I'm with Will Patrick, who's the managing director. Hiya. Great to see you, Will. Uh really fascinated by the business because I think this is a story that's happening in other places, but it's kind of unique the way it's happened here. You're actually the third generation. Your grandfather started the business decades ago. You taken over recently from your father. Talk me through a bit of the history and tell me what the new broom is sweeping through.

Will Patrick, Managing Director of FermionX 0:41

Yeah, I mean it started from my my granddad, but my nan as well, um, 53 years ago now, which is crazy. They my granddad was a silkscreen artist, then moved into PCBs. Then my dad took it on maybe 20 years ago, moved from PCBs into assembly, and now here we are. So about two years into being managing director now. So into that sort of journey of the third generation. Yeah. And yeah, it's exciting. A lot's happened.

The Digital Pivot And Growth Aim

Philip Stoten, Journalist and Podcaster 1:07

Yeah, I mean it's fascinating, isn't it? Because as as you have those generations and clearly pivotal changes, revolutions each time, your revolution seems to be a bit of a digital revolution, and you've really changed the way the business operates, and you've really built something that is capable of scaling much more quickly and is a bit perhaps more agile for your customers. What was the strategy behind that? Did you know you were going to do that when you came in, or did you just see as soon as you came in, those were the changes that you needed to make?

MES, Dashboards, And Culture Shift

Will Patrick, Managing Director of FermionX 1:38

I saw the gaps, I think. I knew what we did really well. I knew we serviced our customers really well. But I also looked at our revenue for the about 10 years before that, and it was completely flat. And I tried to understand why that was. I have no interest in keeping it flat. I want to grow, so I need to know how we did that. Um, and quite quickly I walked in and thought, you know, I think I said earlier, I haven't got years of experience behind me. I don't know every single part number like a lot of the staff did off the bat. I needed a way to say, let's cut through all the mess as such, look at the top level. Can I get this whole thing run on figures and dashboards and top level? So loads of things changed that. I mean, we got a new MES system, which was huge, much well, fully traceable, whereas the other one wasn't, which means everyone needs to add their data. That's a massive cultural change. We're about two years into it now. I'd say we're probably about 85% of the way through there culturally. People now understand it. Then I got delved quite a lot into Power BI, so I now get all the top-level dashboards based on that. If it doesn't work, we fix it at the core. I can show customers a lot of their data from our system now. If they find errors, you create a much more collaboration where they're, and that's not right. And then we say, Oh no, it's not, you know. Well, we need to fix that our thing. So yeah, that pushed a lot of it. Outside of that, I think we just needed a lot better quality controls. So a lot of the investment we've done on machines and our infrastructure and factory helped that. Fixing it really at the root, and it's a long-term strategy, obviously, because uh I hopefully have quite a long career left in me, so it's worth doing that now rather than and that's probably the best way to say it. My dad had a sort of two, three-year plan. I'm looking at a 20, 30 year plan. They're just different, really. And the step change is a lot of investment initially to give us the infrastructure to grow.

Philip Stoten, Journalist and Podcaster 3:26

Yeah, and I think you know, the proof of the pudding is always in the Ethan and these things. And and you said 10 years of static revenue, you've seen last two years of quite substantial growth.

Investing For A 20–30 Year Horizon

Proving Growth And Customer Visibility

Will Patrick, Managing Director of FermionX 3:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a lot of that is we can give visibility to customers, they like that. We've obviously invested, you know, hundreds of thousands in our facilities, we look a lot better, and we've cleared a lot of space by being or implementing operational improvements. So now they're looking at a factory four where they can see a third of it's empty, ready for them to pull more work. Before, like I said, we were reasonably profitable for the size, for the revenue we had. So we needed to sort of strip that all back, start again, uh, put a bit more overheads in. But yeah, we've got an infrastructure. And I think also when you have customers around with a contract manufacturer, you're not you're not selling a product they might buy once and never come back. You're having to sell a partnership. So I think, hopefully, hearing a story of you know how I'm invested in this for the next 30 years is quite enticing to a business that they know there's stability there as well, and they know it's gonna continue, and I'm gonna continue to put a lot of effort into their product.

Building Capacity Without More Overheads

Philip Stoten, Journalist and Podcaster 4:35

Yeah, I think that's really interesting. And what and what you're bringing is you're bringing that future-proofing, but you're also drawing on what's happened in the past. And you you said you know you've got a core ethic of customer service that was really strong. So actually maintaining that and layering that up with tools that allow you to do that even better is is hugely advantageous. What are your kind of ambitions for the business? Where do you where do you see it going? Do you see like a nice steady growth?

Will Patrick, Managing Director of FermionX 5:02

Yeah, I think so. I think um probably created an infrastructure now. We're around 10 million, created an infrastructure that's probably gonna 25 without having to increase that many overheads. Each time I think we need more overheads in admin or people. I think we've got a good team around us now. I'm gonna lean quite heavily probably on AI and data, where we can do a lot of the admin jobs for us. And that's my goal. Sometimes you're gonna have to, but um, get to that 25 million mark in the same physical infrastructure we have now. We might be able to run shifts, or there's probably ways we can run surface amount, uh increase capacity. Um, and a lot of the admin work can be done in ways where you don't need a lot more people. Yeah. Um that's kind of my goal. I think we could quite easily achieve that.

Replacing Tribal Knowledge With Data

Philip Stoten, Journalist and Podcaster 5:49

Yeah, and you've replaced kind of tribal knowledge, which you had before, you know, people just doing it that way because they'd always done it that way, and they knew almost a feeling of how the minds were tuned and everything with stuff that's really data-driven. So that's huge. You invested in MES, you've invested in the Koyang inspection system, which has given you the K Smart data, you've got the Luminovo system. Does that reflect a strategy of like pooling as much data in into one resource as possible so you can actually drill down in that area?

Unifying K-Smart, Luminovo, And MES

Will Patrick, Managing Director of FermionX 6:19

Yeah. Well, uh every action someone takes in this factory, sh there has to be a data point for it. Um we're scanning on and off every single jobs where we weren't before. Everything now goes through our main manufacturing system. Luminovo, like I said, great bit of kit. I need to get that with a better link API so it almost becomes one system in itself. Um but yeah, and the main thing is you want to get a data point for every action that doesn't make it any slower for the employee or operator as well. So there's things like in stores, we probably want to set up scanners so the whole thing just works a lot cleaner. Um but we set the infrastructure now, we can see where there's gaps, and we can I've kind of stripped it all back, and now we need to build it all back up again based on that data.

AI Ambitions And Practical Use Cases

Philip Stoten, Journalist and Podcaster 7:06

Yeah, and you're basing it on new new data-driven foundations or a data-driven um backbone. You talk about AI, and I think we're seeing AI being used in areas like maybe the Koyoung um feeding back to the printer and make helping make adjustments there and the stuff you're doing with Luminovo. But I think as a leader, what you want is to be able to have an overarching system, some kind of agentic system where you can actually interrogate all those to make business decisions. That's an interesting future, but we're away from it.

Will Patrick, Managing Director of FermionX 7:41

Yeah, yeah. I think um let's see where it goes. I think being a young MD, if it doesn't work, maybe the first time round or second time round, it's not a problem. I think it's we need to learn how it works. But I think things like an MRP or exception reporting, I just imagine where it's just lots of data points and lots of pluses and minuses. If you can get something like AI to just scan through that and say this is the one I think might be the problem. Who knows, yeah? Like I said, I've focused on data first and then maybe AI at that point. But we're kind of stable where we are now. If we got a hell of a lot more sales in and we needed a hell of a lot more overhead, maybe I'd start to sort of implement it at that point. But pretty happy where we are now.

Closing And Reflections

Philip Stoten, Journalist and Podcaster 8:23

Yeah, you start with data, you layer on insight on top of that, and then you look at where you can deliver value for you, but also deliver value for your customers, which is uh yeah, it's a huge part of it. Will, thanks so much for your time. Thanks for sharing around the factory. It looks very impressive now. You're welcome. Um, look forward to our next chat.

Will Patrick, Managing Director of FermionX 8:41

Cheers. Thanks.