Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Current Issue

Current Issue

Managing a paradigm shift is much easier when the transition does not involve you.

As designers and manufacturers of advanced technology products, living day by day on the slippery slope that separates bleeding edge and commodity technology, one thing we have become pretty comfortable dealing with is paradigm shifts. I say “pretty comfortable,” as, while we deal well with changing technology demands, process implementation, standards requirements and customer expectations, even the most-seasoned veteran still cringes at one type of paradigm change: hiring, training and working with the next generation of “young” employees.

Growth at all costs usually costs too much.

Psst! Hey you! Yeah, you over there … EMS guy. Don’t turn around and ignore me just because I’m a shadow of what I used to be…. I wanna help.

Read more: When ‘Scaling Up’ Leads to ‘Belly Up’

Print and money: How the West’s inflexibility costs us all.

Some things our industry does are simply extraordinary!

Read more: Why ‘No Change’ Adds Up to a Fortune

Could 3-D printers undo decades of frame-up circuit board assembly?

Ever since Henry Ford invented the assembly line, automobiles were assembled by first taking a frame, or chassis, and pulling it down a long line while workers bolted pieces and parts onto it until at the end – voilà! – you had an automobile.