-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBox Build
One trend is to add box build and final assembly to your product offering. In this issue, we explore the opportunities and risks of adding system assembly to your service portfolio.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
Bumpy but Recovering
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
NEW ORLEANS — The Technology Market Research Council (TMRC), the marketing side of IPC — Association Connecting Electronics Industries, held their fall meeting November 5 through 6 in New Orleans during IPC's Annual Meeting. Leading industry experts gave their views under the title, "How Hot Is Our Future?"
"This is a tough time in electronics," said Walt Custer of Custer Consulting Group. "The domestic PCB landscape has changed. Now there are fewer PCB suppliers. More boards will be produced offshore. Proximity due to design teams' need to control changes will determine what gets outsourced locally.
PCB production in North America is still a significant market, though," Custer added. "PCB suppliers will recover. It will certainly occur. Survivors will share the pie, which may be a bit smaller but still lucrative. It's a new world now. The market has changed. Recovery will begin in 2003 and continue into 2004."
Most experts pointed out how the market has changed. Honeywell, Tyco and others have shut down some operations. In 2000, there was still a lot of debt on companies' balance sheets, and carrying debt through a downturn has made it difficult. North American and European companies have shut down substantial excess PCB capacity. Used PCB process equipment abounds.
If you look at the top world contract electronics manufacturers and compare 2001 vs. 2000, the overall effect is -4 percent growth. This makes for a highly unusual year.
The massive PCB capacity buildup in China continues. This supplies new prospects for companies selling equipment to this sector.
For PCB suppliers with a strong balance sheet and a keen market focus, these will survive and prosper. However, the new "pie" is a smaller.
Specialty R&D Labs Fill Industry Niche
This is part two in a two-part series about specialty R&D laboratories. Part 1 ran in the October issue of SMT.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y, NORCROSS, Ga. and PALO ALTO, Calif. — Universal Instruments Corp.'s SMT lab in Binghamton was established in 1987. A consortia of about 25 companies, including large OEMs and EMS companies, do basic research there in materials, PCB design, yield characterization, processes, and reliability in BGA/CSP, flip chip and optoelectronics, said Richard Boulanger, vice president of Advanced Semiconductor Assembly for Universal.
Last month, Universal opened the 6,000 sq. ft. Suzhou Technology Center in China. The lab offers an assembly line with screen printer, a chipshooter, pick-and-place machine, and a reflow oven, as well as failure analysis equipment, a coordinate measurement machine (CMM), sectioning equipment and a metallograph.
Norcross, Ga.-based Siemens Dematic Electronics Assembly Systems (EAS) Inc. opened its 11,000 sq. ft. Advanced Assembly Technology (AAT) Center in Norcross in October 2001. The center offers advanced SMT assembly, advanced packaging and module assembly, integrated die mounting and wire bonding, and materials processing and analysis, among other capabilities.
Another feature is Advanced Assembly Training, courses in electronics assembly, test, characterization, failure analysis and reliability testing. According to Siemens, the courses can help attendees design cost-effective boards and assembly processes.
At Palo Alto, Calif.-based Agilent Tech-nologies Inc., Agilent Laboratories has been the company's central research facility since Agilent was spun off from Hewlett-Packard. A specific segment of the laboratory focuses on the manufacturing test segment of the value chain, including semiconductor and electronics assembly and test areas to provide technology for the manufacturing test floor.
"What we are trying to do is anticipate where are the major technology trends changing the industry's concepts, and then try to focus on these by developing new test concepts and test IP that can be put into new products from our business partner divisions," said Wilhelm Radermacher, manager of Automated Test Innovations for Agilent Laboratories.