Getting the North American electronics band back together will take significant time and effort.

Thanks to a series of events and geopolitical shifts – think global supply chain strains caused by a pandemic; import tariffs ricocheting throughout the electronics industry; weapon systems depleted from regional wars – there is an outcry to get the band back together: the band being North American electronics manufacturing.

The band was playing the hits in the late 1980s and early 1990s when North America was in a leadership position as gauged not just by technical development but the ability to produce that technology in volume. The music (read: technical development) is still being written profusely, but where are the bands to play (read: manufacture) the music? That is why the crowd is chanting to get the band back together. The chanting comes in the form of legislation such as the CHIPS Act, as well as from "strategic sourcing" executives searching for local North American suppliers like they had back when the band was alive, well and making the hits.

Read more: Sweet Music: The PCB Reunion Tour

The industry’s next generation is on the rise.

I am continually amazed at how many people I see and run into at each industry meeting or event – especially at technical meetings when I’m watching people leave one room and enter another for the next session. It strikes me a bit like watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace – people leave one room to enter the next to do the same thing, and repeat!

One thing that makes our industry so strong and enduring is having so many people work together to contribute to developing and refining technologies, writing standards for those technologies and processes, and sharing their knowledge with others to fully understand those technologies and standards. And then as they say, “repeat.”

Read more: Changing of the Guard