Tech Day puts Zero-Defect Manufacturing at the centre of India’s electronics revolution, revealing bold strategies to achieve flawless production at scale.
At a time when India is racing to become a global electronics manufacturing hub, Tech Day 2025 emerged as a crucial knowledge platform bringing engineers, designers and manufacturers face-to-face with the real bottlenecks holding back zero-defect reliability.
From material misuse to weak DFM discipline to poor awareness of thermal and environmental stresses, the event cut through theory and delivered what the industry urgently needed: practical, ground-floor insights from the people solving these issues every day. For the audience, the takeaway was unmistakable, better materials, better design decisions and smarter assembly processes are no longer optional but the foundation of long-term reliability.
Maxim SMT, in collaboration with MacDermid Alpha, successfully hosted the Technology Day Seminar on “Zero Defect Manufacturing – Driving Reliability & Process Excellence in Electronics Manufacturing” on 27 November 2025 at their Manesar facility.
Thermal challenges and material science take centre stage
Opening the discussion, Richard Puthota, Senior Director, MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions, spoke about the rising complexity of electronics, particularly in EVs and power electronics. He explained how shrinking PCB space and increasing power density create thermal and mechanical stress that can severely compromise system reliability.
“Thermal management is critical for reliability,” he stressed, explaining that many field failures trace back to incorrect material usage and process control. “When we investigate failures, we often see that the core cause lies in misunderstanding the base materials like PCBs, solder joints, assembly processes and thermal cycles.”
Material selection- industry’s weakest link
Continuing the conversation, Sharan Aiyappa, Director, MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions, pointed out that the industry still lacks maturity in selecting the right polymers, potting compounds and conformal coatings. “People are using the wrong materials for the wrong applications,” he observed.
He also highlighted that the lack of training and awareness is leading to expensive field failures, “Cost is not a solution for everything. If you want true reliability, the right materials need to be selected at the design stage itself.” He emphasised that Tech Day aims to educate OEMs and EMS teams, enabling them to make informed engineering choices rather than treating materials as last-minute decisions.
India’s manufacturing leap needs a stronger design discipline
Turning to manufacturing scalability, Sakthivel P, General Manager, MST Manufacturing Technologies Pvt Ltd, pointed out that the biggest bottleneck during mass production stems from insufficient DFM (Design for Manufacturing). “We concentrate on fast production but ignore small details, and that pops up as failures when volume increases,” he said.
On India’s readiness for global manufacturing leadership, he added, “We have started the shift, but it will take another two to three years to become masters. Localisation of components is crucial.”
Tech Day 2025 ended with a united voice of India’s race toward zero-defect electronics, demanding disciplined design, smarter material engineering, automation-led production, and accelerated localisation. With collaboration, training and innovation, the industry believes that India can build not just products but global reliability benchmarks.
