Tommy Cristobal

Valin is providing superior customer service and account management while continuing to generate new specifications because of the new Semiconductor market structure. Tommy Cristobal understood that a key component of a successful structure is having a top-notch customer service team in place to support sales and customers. Tommy started building the automation team without being asked. He developed an outstanding team by combining existing automation customer service representatives with employees from Valin’s recent acquisitions of USAutomation and Sun Automation. He recognizes the strengths of individuals and transitioned one of his reports to lead the team because they possessed strong leadership skills and experience. Drawing upon and utilizing the skills of others yields personal growth and investment in the goal of the team.

Having a competent customer service team in place gives Valin’s automation sales team the confidence that customers are in good hands and are properly taken care of, allowing them to focus on new opportunities. This also provides an optimum position to expand our automation supplier base and work together to meet requirements.

Tommy’s foresight in expanding our capacity to service customer demand allowed him to focus on a new challenge that occurred in the last quarter of 2022 with Semiconductor OEM customers. The combination of memory chip oversupply and government restrictions on shipments to China significantly reduced the build plans of the OEMs. Almost overnight Valin’s customer service teams transitioned from constant order expedites to order pushouts and cancelations. Due to the nature of our customer’s MRP systems, there is a constant ebb and flow of delivery dates pulled in and pushed out. This magnitude of change created by the Semi OEM whiplash challenged our normal processes to align with our supplier pipeline. Tommy, with the help of Valin’s operations team, rose to the occasion and created tools in a compressed timeframe to manage the changing demand landscape. The new tools combine the data from Valin’s ERP system, customer OEM portals, and supplier data to help us understand the changing situation instantly. Tommy reviews the new data each week and logs the updates which are invaluable in helping to manage the situation. Having current information helps us quickly decide what actions to take with customers and suppliers to control the flow of material in a very long supply chain pipeline. To simplify it, the tools will help us from having too much inventory on hand, which can be unhealthy.