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IPC Study Examines Potential Areas for Global Expansion
September 18, 2014 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
When companies decide to expand global operations, more than one region or country will often work. Weeding out extraneous data to get information that's relevant for the decision-making process can be a very time-consuming task.
IPC has published a study containing a wealth of data that's relevant to companies in the electronics industry. Where in the World? A Regional Strategy Roadmap for Electronics Manufacturers is a 145-page report that covers 30 countries, providing a broad range of information for each. It lists major corporations that are in the area, while also describing regional trends that could impact future development.
"This is a comprehensive resource for executives who are doing long-range planning on their global footprint," said Sharon Starr, IPC's director of market research. "It has detailed information on many factors that are specific to the electronics industry that will help them make informed decisions."
The data was collected by BPA Consulting, a research firm that has worked with IPC for some time. The study is designed to help electronics manufacturers address three key needs: Making things inexpensively in high volume to supply existing markets; fabricating intelligence/technology-rich products for mature markets where rapid response and flexibility are at a premium; and the potential for substantial new markets as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increases.
"From the late '90s to the early years of this millennium, China was an inexpensive area in which to grow production," said Nick Pearne, director of BPA Consulting and author of the IPC study. "This balance is now shifting as the Chinese economy develops and the second and third factors are coming into play. However, it is clear that China will remain as the most massive manufacturing region for electronic interconnect and assembly for this decade and beyond."
The study also identifies the major assembly company operations located in each country and the technological and market "hot spots" throughout the world, and reviews on-shoring and off-shoring trends. Analysis of how nations handle intellectual property and how the overseas investment flows into each country indicate levels of confidence and enable industrial development is also included. The report was designed to convey the majority of information graphically, offering a comparative, standard format to enable rapid assessment of the relative potential of the covered economies.
The report cites Mexico and Vietnam as two of the most attractive locations for interconnect and assembly. Mexico overshadows Brazil, which has made substantial progress in recent years. Brazil's image matured when it successfully hosted the World Cup. But all in all, Brazil loses hands down to Mexico as a good manufacturing base.
Countries east of Europe, notably the Czech Republic and Hungary, are proving very successful for fast response, high tech production. Ukraine also holds promise for Europe, but the ongoing turmoil with Russia could well prove extremely problematic for business.