Category Archives: Hot Wires

Mike Buetow’s thoughts on the industry

No Laugh Riot

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Like the NFL officiating, it just keeps getting worse.

At least 40 Foxconn workers are reportedly in Chinese hospitals today following a late night riot at the company’s massive campus in Taiyuan, a city in northern China.

Workers apparently took matters into their own hands after company guards reportedly badly beat at least one employee. Photos from the scene uploaded to China’s version of Twitter, which Chinese official moved quickly to censor, showed hundreds of employees and police in riot gear, and in one case, an overturned guard building.

Many blue-chip OEMs rely on Foxconn to manage the better part of their supply chain, and have continued to do so despite longstanding accusations of worker abuse. Apple, so far, has survived the heat, although the flames get hotter by the day. But for struggling companies like Dell and HP, the question must again be asked: Is this relationship good for your brand? Or is it time to take a stand against what is clearly an counterproductive business plan?

PCB West: Are You Ready?

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It’s here.

PCB West opens on Tuesday at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The annual conference and exhibition is the Silicon Valley’s largest electronics design and manufacturing trade show of the year, and this year’s preregistration is running about 7% above last year’s numbers.

We are ecstatic to be back in Santa Clara, and are looking forward to this year’s program. Highlights of the 55-presentation conference include several talks on RF and microwave design and materials, flex design and fabrication, and the return of Doug Brooks as a presenter for the first time in three years.

The emerging assembly “conference within a conference” covers everything from package-on-package and bottom termination components to Eric Miscoll’s presentation on the latest trends between electronics manufacturing services providers and their OEM customers.

The show floor is sold out, and every leading design software company will be there, plus several top fabricators and EMS companies of all sizes. Be sure to turn out on Sept. 26 for “Free Wednesday,” when we feature several technical presentations and our New Product Introduction awards. (That’s also the the exhibition is open.)

The show takes place Sept. 25-27. Register at pcbwest.com, and if you see me walking the show, be sure to say “hi.”

PCB West Next Week

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As most of you (hopefully) know, PCB West is next week. The annual conference and trade show, now in its 21st year, is the biggest and best event for the electronics design, fabrication and assembly in the Silicon Valley.

Here’s what Dave Ryder, president of Prototron Circuits, has to say about PCB West: “We have been coming to this show for a number of years now and we never fail to pick up some very good and productive leads. In fact, last year we were so busy that we barely had time to eat lunch. With all of the PCB designers attending the conference it makes this a great show for us who are in the quickturn prototype business.”

PCB West takes place Sept. 25 to 27 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The exhibition, which is free to attend (be sure to preregister at pcbwest.com), is Sept. 26. The show floor is sold out. Check it out!

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.