Current Issue

Mike Buetow

I was all set this month to write about plating using additive manufacturing, but when someone pointed out just how subtractive the industry really is, it compelled a change in plans.

It came in the way of an email from Dr. Hayao Nakahara, the preeminent market researcher in the printed circuit industry. Naka, as he is known to friends, shared results of a months-long study of the North American PCB supply base.

This was no easy task. Naka started with the Fabfile database, long the favorite child of Harvey Miller. Harvey, who is about to hit 100 years old (!), gave Naka the keys to the car. In turn, Naka reached out to every company on that list, diligently revising and updating. The effort took more than three months.

Read more: A Different Kind of Additive Manufacturing

Mike Buetow

For more than 20 years, PCD&F/CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY has been proud to be the exclusive publisher of the annual NTI - 100 list of the world’s largest board fabricators.

One of the striking changes over the years has been the reshaping of the industry geographical landscape.

In this year’s rankings, which begin on page 32 of the August 2022 issue, see how many Europe- and US-based companies are in the top 25. I'll save you the suspense. One each: AT&S and TTM Technologies, respectively. Long gone are the days when Photocircuits, Sanmina, Hadco, Viasystems and the like dominated the top of the chart.

Read more: In the Rush to Get Big, Let’s Not Forget the Little Guys

Mike Buetow

Foxconn was in the news (again) last month, this time for alleging competitors are poaching its employees.

The complaints were levied specifically at rivals in Vietnam, where the world’s largest ODM/EMS is expanding its factories as major customers like Apple shift production away from China, in part to avoid being a pawn in the geopolitical tug-of-war between the US and China.

Foxconn, which currently employs about 60,000 workers in Vietnam, asserts its EMS competitors are establishing their own operations near Foxconn’s to make it easier to entice workers to jump ship.

Poaching complaints are hardly new, of course. Mexico is notorious for workers relocating en masse from company to company in pursuit of everything from higher pay to better food in the plant cafeteria.

Read more: Training Begets Retaining

Mike Buetow

Have big box stores learned lessons that can be applied by electronics manufacturers?

One of the big takeaways from the Future Compute conference on the campus of MIT in May was a definitive “yes!”

There, we heard about how some of the large retail chains like Target use software, hardware and data in all kinds of customer experiences.

Almost every employee has handheld devices tracking the billions of sensors and cameras in use across some 1,900 stores and 50 regional distribution centers. At each store, it runs about 100 different software applications. They look at traffic trends: When is the peak? When is the lag? And how can they be modulated?

Now consider an electronics manufacturing operation. There could be hundreds of operators, thousands of PCBs, millions of components, billions of solder joints, each one needing traceability.

Read more: ‘At the Edge' of a Data Revolution

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