JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #100 - Special JEC Asia - October 2015 - 4

point of view: the future of composites in Mobile

Motorola:
a composites-geared strategy

interview
Thomas Vondrak
senior direcTor
nPi adVanced Technology & maTerials
Motorola, a Lenovo Company

JEC Composites Magazine: Can
you briefly tell us about your
career?

Thomas Vondrak: I have

After Motorola won its second Award at the May 2015 JEC Americas
in Houston for its Droid Turbo innovation, we approached Thomas
Vondrak, Motorola's senior Director for NPI Advanced Technology &
Materials, and asked him to tell us more about his experience in the
field of composites, about the collaboration with RocTool, and about
Motorola's goals.

Along the way, I earned a
Masters of Business Administration from the Kellogg
Graduate School of Business
at Northwestern University in
Evanston Illinois, and became
quite active in the definition of
our next-generation products
to bring new technologies and
great value to our customers.

JCM: What specifically
is Motorola/Lenovo's current
scope of activity?

had a great opportunity to grow
with Motorola and the mobile
industry and take on a variety
of assignments and challenges
in that time. I graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania
in Philadelphia with a degree
in mechanical engineering and
applied mechanics. I joined
Motorola early on in the mobile
revolution and worked in
development engineering as a
mechanical engineer, working
mostly on the physical packaging and manufacturability of
cellular phones.

I have always had a focus on
new technologies, leading the
development engineering of
Motorola's first phones with
capacitive touch controls for
music (KRZR on Verizon), and
then Motorola's first full capacitive touch screen phone (Krave
on Verizon).

Based on those experiences, I
acted as Motorola's development engineering subject matter expert for touch systems,
cover lenses, and IR headdetect systems.

In product development engineering, I worked my way up
to be director of engineering,
responsible for all aspects of the
phone development, including
RF, electrical, mechanical, and
manufacturing.

Finally, for the last 5 years or
so, I moved on to Motorola's
supply chain working as senior
director of procurement and
sourcing, managing mechanical, metals, electromechanical,
and RF commodities, while

also focusing on new mechanical technologies. I was given
the challenge of creating the
company's supply base for
composites since the introduction of our first Kevlar-backed
housing in the fall of 2011, and
have greatly enjoyed pushing
the boundaries of composites manufacture to meet the
unique, high volume, high
dimensional stability, and high
cosmetic requirements for the
mobile industry.

4 jec composites magazine / No100 October 2015

Motorola has an
unmatched legacy in
wireless technologies
and is the inventor of
the cellphone

T. V. : The combined Motorola/Lenovo is currently
the world's #3 smartphone
manufacturer. Motorola has an
unmatched legacy in wireless
technologies and is the inventor
of the cellphone. Our business
has evolved and refined over the
years to focus on a portfolio of
smartphones at a variety of price
points to offer our customers
around the world the perfect
phone to meet their needs
and budget. Motorola's brand
strength in North America, Latin America, and Europe merge
well with Lenovo's strengths in
Asia, Africa, and Australia, giving us a complete global brand
presence.
JCM: What does the smartphone
business represent for you, and
what are the stakes?

T. V. : Cellular phones, and
now smartphones, have had a
revolutionary effect on the telecommunications and electronics industry, with the consolidation of immense computing and
communications power into the
palm of a customer's hand. We

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #100 - Special JEC Asia - October 2015