Engineering Excellence: Spotlight on Galen Alexander
Celebrating a career of curiousity, dedication, and global reach

At Cogiscan, we often talk about the transformative power of our solutions and how they make a difference in our customers’ factories. Behind every line of code, every integration, and every customer success story, there’s a diverse and talented team making it all happen. One of those people is Galen Alexander, a seasoned application engineer whose journey through the electronics manufacturing world spans more than three decades.

Our customers don’t just buy software; they invest in long-term partnerships with us. They rely on our team to guide them through complex transformations, to understand their unique challenges, and to deliver to fruition. Galen’s role as an application engineer is central to this. He’s often the face of Cogiscan in the field, ensuring that our solutions don’t just work in the factory, but equally work for the people using them.

From the get-go, it’s obvious Galen is the type of application engineer that everyone wants on their project. He’s exceptionally detailed oriented, process driven when it matters (which to Galen is always), technically savvy to solve unexpected surprises, and extremely conscientious about outstanding requirements and action items. From a customer’s perspective, he can be the important differentiator for a successful project.

Galen unexpectedly landed in the electronics manufacturing industry in the mid 1990’s as an SMT lead for a local OEM in Washington state. Since then, he’s worked on the equipment vendor side of the industry as well as for an electronics manufacturing services provider. With this type of firsthand practical knowledge to Cogiscan’s key market segments and the challenges they face, he was an obvious addition to the team in 2012.

“I had previously met and worked with all three co-founders of Cogiscan, André Corriveau, François Monette and Vincent Dubois. I knew that these were innovative, passionate, and hard-working businessmen who were, at the same time, funny, interesting, and generous individuals treating those working for the company with respect,” commented Galen. “When I was looking to move on from my previous position, Cogiscan was the first and only call I made.”

In the last decade, Galen has traveled all around the globe for Cogiscan to 100+ factories, and there isn’t much he hasn’t seen. Putting that expertise to concrete action is where he excels – working with current and potential customers alike to solve specific challenges with tangible examples because he’s seen and resolved their types of issues for years.

“I recall a particularly tricky integration to a specific placement machine type for a customer in southern Argentina,” mentioned Galen. “It took many days and much experimentation while working remotely with one of our developers to be able to get the desired functionality implemented. The effort was well worth it as this adapter is still in use by that customer as well as many others.”

Each project brings its own flavor of challenge and reward. Specifically, the problem-solving aspects of the job keep him interested – the complexity of traveling to a new destination, immersing himself in a factory environment to properly understand the customer’s requirements, and the hands-on work of successfully installing a project or feature. At the end of a project, he particularly enjoys reflecting on the obstacles overcome and the tangible improvements for the customer’s production team.

He recently returned from a visit to SIIX Electronics factory in San Luis Potosi, Mexico and was pleasantly surprised to see the tangible impact of the Cogiscan system in-use throughout production.

“I well remember going to that facility when it had a single SMT line running. I gave them a demo of what we could offer them,” Galen added. “Now, that same site has about 30 SMT lines and a large portion of backend equipment Cogiscan enabled. Globally, they are one of our biggest Cogiscan-connected customers.”

While Galen didn’t intend to be an electronics manufacturing engineer careerist, he is proud of the long-standing relationships he’s built with partners, colleagues and customers over the years. These relationships serve as an anchor in an industry that has been continuously transformed by major changes in the last three decades.

“There have been so many changes during my career that it would be hard to list them all. Some of the longest running shifts and trends have been the increasing capabilities of SMT equipment with regards to native setup validation, traceability and reporting features,” commented Galen.

He also notes the ubiquitous nature of automated inspection – when he first started in electronics manufacturing, it was rare to see any form of in-line inspection. Nowadays, most manufacturers not only have in-line automated optical inspection (AOI) but also run an in-line solder paste inspection (SPI) machine and oftentimes, x-ray too.

As for the future of electronics manufacturing, especially related to software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, he’s particularly enthusiastic about the potential to improve analyses of process issues for operators and technicians. Recognizing that building a good data set to train such an AI model will be no easy feat, he’s optimistic about what the next decade holds for improving problem-solving on the SMT manufacturing line.

While initially drawn to this industry by an innate sense of adventure and desire to travel globally, it’s the Cogiscan culture coupled with the people he’s encountered over the years that keep him here.  

Another Cogiscan tradition is the global team week hosted annually where the entire team travels to the headquarters in Québec for company-wide activities and meetings. Reflecting on lessons learned, strategically planning for the next 12 months, and enjoying team building exercises together – this is the week where Galen has some of his fondest memories. He tends to dominate in the team competition exercises and still revels in winning the gold medal at a global team event in 2019.

“Team Green, captained by Sylvie Perras, our accounting technician, of which I was a member, so completely drubbed all competitors… that they have yet to fully recover,” boasted Galen. “I’ve had to hide away my gold medal from this event so as not to further traumatize our fallen foes.”

As Galen looks ahead, he remains committed to fostering long-standing relationships and embracing new customers in an industry that never stands still. His journey is a testament to the power of curiosity, adaptability, and a passion for problem-solving.

At Cogiscan, our solutions may be digital, but it’s the people behind them who make them truly impactful. We believe that we are more than the sum of our parts. Our technology is only as strong as the people who build, support, and evolve it. Galen’s story is a perfect example of this principle in action. In a world chasing AI, we’re prioritizing the power of our human intelligence (HI)… because that’s where the real value lies.