For over a dozen years, the cornerstone of Glenair’s international business program has been the manufacture and sale of Miles Roystone Micro-D connectors and assemblies. While this product line has achieved excellent success in Europe, we have had no equivalent product to offer our North American customers. So this past June, in a move that clearly falls into the category of "pursuing each task through to completion" we took steps to secure our future in the micro connector market - both for Europe, as well as in the rest of the world. The addition of Microway Systems to the Glenair family brings the company’s TwistPin contact system (the foundation for the Miles Roystone product) as well as a host of other capabilities in Micro-D design and development completely in-house. To say this is a significant undertaking for Glenair is an understatement. It represents a big move; one which will turn our long experience with micro- connectors into a major new business for the company.

Microminiature interconnect systems are typically a highly customized, built to order type of product. Many of the standard MIL-DTL-83513 connectors manufactured at Microway are, for example, generally sold as made to order pigtail assemblies. Other products, like the MicroStrips used in board to wire packaging, are produced in custom increments from 2 to 60 positions. The tolerances are exacting. The environmental sealing is very specialized. The need for high-reliability is paramount. In every respect, it is exactly these kinds of considerations that makes this a market worth pursuing: while it demands excellence in execution, it can nevertheless yield extremely rich rewards.

In many ways, the micro-connector market is a paradox: it’s made up of both lumbering giants as well as small, mom-and-pop businesses. We believe Glenair is perfectly positioned to succeed in such a setting by providing a level of service customers are unlikely to receive from their current suppliers. As has been the case in our core accessory business, it is our expectation that availability, turnaround, quality and ease of doing business are premiums which will earn us customer loyalty and business success. Bringing Glenair’s "best-value" model of outstanding customer service to the microconnector market is at the heart of our strategy for earning our share of its business. To paraphrase our guiding principle, the merit of this strategy will be realized in finishing it to the end.