Author Archives: Mike

About Mike

Mike Buetow is president of the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (pcea.net). He previously was editor-in-chief of Circuits Assembly magazine, the leading publication for electronics manufacturing, and PCD&F, the leading publication for printed circuit design and fabrication. He spent 21 years as vice president and editorial director of UP Media Group, for which he oversaw all editorial and production aspects. He has more than 30 years' experience in the electronics industry, including six years at IPC, an electronics trade association, at which he was a technical projects manager and communications director. He has also held editorial positions at SMT Magazine, community newspapers and in book publishing. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois. Follow Mike on Twitter: @mikebuetow

What Goes Around

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Taiwanese printed circuit fabricators are feeling the pain of the currency crunch as their South Korean competitors have been taking advantage of the cheap won (and, in the cases of Samsung and LG, the home court advantage) to woo new orders.

As of today, one Taiwanese dollar is worth 38.1 won, down from a 12-month high of more than 40 won but still up 4.4% from the low. In the cutthroat world of PCB pricing, a 4% or more currency advantage is huge.

What’s interesting, however, is that Taiwan has noted South Korea’s government is intervening to keep the won cheap, which is precisely the argument the US government has made against China with its currency.

Oh, and most major Taiwanese board fabricators have plants in China. Few South Korean fabs do.

 

New Blog Link

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To the right on this page is a list of links to other blogs related to printed circuit board design, fabrication, assembly and supply-chain management.

Among the recently added is a link to Tektronix’s new Bandwidth Banter blog. Bandwidth Banter is a useful and lively mix of test tips, perspectives and musings directly from the Tektronix engineering community and create a new channel for conversation and feedback. Discussions will explore how test and measurement technologies can be applied to tackle difficult debug challenges or delve into best-practices for cross-domain triggering to isolate design flaws, for instance. At the same time, readers can expect to find practical tips and hands-on guidance about using test instruments more effectively as well as more light-hearted takes on the state of the industry.

The downside: to comment, you have to register using Tektronix’s site, not a third-party site like Disqus. So in short, Tektronix gets your name and contact info.

100,000 Down

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What’s the impact of the loss of 100,000 years of knowledge?

H-P is about to find out, because that’s how much experience is walking out the door.

The following is from the company’s official announcement about its Enhanced Early Retirement (EER) program:

“This is a distinguished group with more than 100,000 years of combined service—a group that represents an important part of HP’s legacy and has made incredible contributions to our success.”

No doubt, many of H-P’s brilliant minds are among those taking the buyout. It’s a shame.

The EMS-to-OEM Transition

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We list more than 2,400 sites on our Directory of Electronics Manufacturing Services Companies. Of  them, I would hazard to say at least 15 to 20% now offer some form of ODM/OEM work.

It’s not always who you’d think, either. While the obvious companies are there — Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron, Flextronics, etc. — more and more smaller firms are joining the fun. Everyone from Hunter Technology, which builds discrete RF/microwave components in California, to Mikroelektronika, which makes fare boxes in the Czech Republic, are involved in some sort of original design manufacture or outright OEM work.

At some point I’ll sit down and count out the exact number. Suffice it to say, it will be significant. EMS firms never sit still.

Wasted Efforts

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The next time we start to complain about government or EPA rules being overly strict, remember this scene:

 

That’s the former site of CGA in Sanford, Maine, where “hundreds of thousands of abandoned circuit boards” having been strewn across three acres for the past 20 years. It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean it up. Every state has a similar story, and it’s a big reason why legislators and bankers are wary of helping the PCB industry. They can’t help but look at the past and worry that it will be repeated.

Riding High on Design

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The herd is riding on the EDA vendors, almost all of which are at or near 52-week high share prices.

In the past week, Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys hit or were trading just pennies off their yearlong highs. National Instruments and Ansys both traded much closer to their highs than their lows. Even Altium closed in on a high, but that’s a bit deceiving because it’s a penny stock and lightly traded on the Australian exchange.

So, is it the investor herd driving up an industry? Or is it a sign that the EDA market, which topped $5 billion for the first time in 2011, is geared up for a sustained run?

 

Do Research Parks Slow Advances?

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A recent visit to Champaign, Illinois, home of the University of Illinois, got me thinking about the relationship between industry and academia.

On south First St. just past the Assembly Hall, looms the Illinois Research Park. It is growing like crazy, with lots of big names in there. Yahoo, Littlefuse, SAIC and Raytheon are just some of the tech companies there, while Caterpillar and John Deere are among the others onsite and Intel and others are nearby.

The site’s Tech Incubator was in 2011 named in 2011 as one of Inc.com’s “10 Start-up Incubators To Watch,” and is home to more than 30 startups.

And given Illinois has one of the top engineering programs in the world, plus a low cost of living, it’s an attractive place for an OEM or software developer to park a design or engineering lab.

Lots of reasons to be proud, right?

Well, maybe. Certainly there needs to be some relationship between industry and academia. They fill in each other’s gaps. Industry provides the real world need and direction, while universities can engage in the long-range blue sky type of research that future groundbreaking technologies can be built on.

Not to throw a wet blanket on the fun, but is it possible whether the close proximity over time might have a potential negative effect? Is it possible that the near-term thinking industry might corrupt the focus on basic research that is the foundation of academia? Could the tight daily interaction provoke university researchers to limit their thinking to the obvious and doable, instead of dreaming the impossible?

The leveraging of academia shows no signs of abating. The question is, should it?

A Look at Reshoring

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A recent article by Software Advice ERP analyst Derek Singleton looks at what products can be manufactured in the US.

In it, Singleton looks at what’s driving the reshoring trend, which industries are good candidates to come back, and profiles three companies (Hurst, General Electric and Peerless Industries) that have brought production back from Asia — and why.

Read more here.