Be sure to stop by Virtual PCB today for the moderated chats on tin whiskers, LEDs, cleaning, improving assembly processes and more.
Also available are several webinars on various process defects, head-in-pillow, and more.
Registration is at www-virtual-pcb.com and everything is free!
1. Although the attendees are online, they usually act as if they are in the flesh. There’s plenty of the “how are you doing,” “great to see you,” and gentle ribbing that takes place when we run into each other at PCB West, SMTAI, Apex or one of the other “bricks and mortar” shows. It’s social. (Perhaps that’s why they call it “social” media.)
2. People are polite to the point of near invisibility. Just like a physical show, some attendees do lots of talking, while others never utter a peep. That’s OK. Lurk away. Everyone learns in their own way.
3. Speaking of learning, it’s almost impossible to attend Virtual PCB and not take away something. Nearly 3,000 people registered last year! These are your peers across the entire electronics manufacturing spectrum, from design to assembly to test. The same experts you might see at a physical show — folks like signal integrity expert Dr. Eric Bogatin or reliability guru Werner Engelmaier, will be there, holding court and sharing their wisdom. More than that, it’s a chance to meet folks from all over the world. These are potential future colleagues and employers. Insofar as networking is concerned, it’s tough to beat.
We hope you take a moment to register (it’s free!) at www.virtual-pcb.com and log-on to Virtual PCB, March 8-9. It’s a fresh way to stay up on our industry — without ever leaving your desk.
But it’s clear from the seven sentence letter that Icahn has no desire to own the PCB/EDA software company. As he states
There will be no financing conditions. Furthermore, we will not insist upon providing for a break-up fee in the transaction so as not to provide a roadblock to others who may want to consider bidding higher than our bid.
In other words, “I don’t want to own you. I just want to maximize the cash I can get for you.”
There are three obvious bidders for Mentor: Synposys and Cadence on the semi design business side, and Cadence and Zuken in the PCB space. That said, Synposys has shown no interest in the PCB side, and Cadence has a relatively new CEO who owes his job in part to the bungled attempt of his predecessor to buy Mentor. I can’t see Cadence making much of a play at this time. Zuken has plenty of cash and hasn’t been able to crack open the North American market (its share as of March 2010 was about 5%); this is a prime opportunity.
Given Icahn’s track record, the odds are growing long that the Mentor of 2012 will look much like the Mentor of today.
Ian Fletcher (not to be confused with the scribe behind the James Bond novels) yesterday wrote about the problems with American manufacturing.
Whereas I agree with his larger points — manufacturing output does not necessarily measure manufacturing health — there’s a couple of problems with some of his supporting evidence.
For one, there’s his contention that because Japan supplies “over 70 percent of the world’s nickel-metal hydride batteries and 60-70 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries,” it give the country “a key advantage in electric cars.”
Well, maybe. Being a supplier of a critical commodity or technology does not, history shows time and again, necessarily translate to ownership over the end-market. Labor and other ancillary costs have a tremendous affect on the procurement decision tree. China, of course, had no real technological advantage over Japan, Taiwan or the US in printed circuit boards. It just had loads of cheap manpower, and a government so eager to build its tech base that it moved land and sea (sometimes literally) to make it possible.
Which brings us to nit No. 2. Says Fletcher: “The Obama administration shows no awareness of any of this, despite scratching a hole in its head over why job creation has stalled. (Hint: it hasn’t stalled in the nations, from China to Germany, running trade surpluses with us in manufactured goods.)” No, unemployment hasn’t stalled in either country, but for reasons other than what Fletcher asserts. China, of course, has an abundance of cheap labor that no country save India can match. In Germany, on the other hand, the unemployment rate is 6.8%, which is better than in the US, but hardly great relative to classical standards. As recently as 2004, it was 9.7%, after which Germany enacted a series of financial reforms. The nation now stands as the financial bedrock upon which lies much of the rest of the beleaguered European Union. Given that, I would argue that Germany ability to position itself financially, rather than any politically driven manufacturing strategy, is at the core of its current export success and employment stability.
Finally, Fletcher ignores a far more significant data point: Japan. Japan’s economy is some 60% larger than Germany’s, and its internal manufacturing supply chains are legendary. Its unemployment rate was 4.9% in December, which appears stellar, until one realizes that figure is 188% higher than the nation’s average from 1953 through 2010. Its GDP is on a roller coaster, having contracted in the December quarter. Yet it runs a $45 billion trade surplus with the US. Here, Fletcher’s contention that trade surpluses and manufacturing supply chains go hand in hand with job creation falls on its face.
Fletcher is on the right track, but some of his supporting details are closer to the James Bond series: good fiction.
Whereas I agree with his larger points — manufacturing output does not necessarily measure manufacturing health — there’s a couple of problems with some of his supporting evidence.
For one, there’s his contention that because Japan supplies “over 70 percent of the world’s nickel-metal hydride batteries and 60-70 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries,” it give the country “a key advantage in electric cars.”
Well, maybe. Being a supplier of a critical commodity or technology does not, history shows time and again, necessarily translate to ownership over the end-market. Labor and other ancillary costs have a tremendous affect on the procurement decision tree. China, of course, had no real technological advantage over Japan, Taiwan or the US in printed circuit boards. It just had loads of cheap manpower, and a government so eager to build its tech base that it moved land and sea (sometimes literally) to make it possible.
Which brings us to nit No. 2. Says Fletcher: “The Obama administration shows no awareness of any of this, despite scratching a hole in its head over why job creation has stalled. (Hint: it hasn’t stalled in the nations, from China to Germany, running trade surpluses with us in manufactured goods.)” No, unemployment hasn’t stalled in either country, but for reasons other than what Fletcher asserts. China, of course, has an abundance of cheap labor that no country save India can match. In Germany, on the other hand, the unemployment rate is 6.8%, which is better than in the US, but hardly great relative to classical standards. As recently as 2004, it was 9.7%, after which Germany enacted a series of financial reforms. The nation now stands as the financial bedrock upon which lies much of the rest of the beleaguered European Union. I would argue that Germany ability to position itself financially, rather than any politically driven manufacturing strategy, is at the core of its current export success and employment stability.
Finally, Fletcher ignores a far more significant data point: Japan. Japan’s economy is some 60% larger than Germany’s, and its internal manufacturing supply chains are legendary. Its unemployment rate was 4.9% in December, which appears stellar, until one realizes that figure is 188% higher than the nation’s average from 1953 through 2010. Its GDP is on a roller coaster, having contracted in the December quarter. Yet it runs a $45 billion trade surplus with the US. Here, Fletcher’s contention that trade surpluses and manufacturing supply chains go hand in hand with job creation falls on its face.
Fletcher is on the right track, but some of his supporting details are closer to the James Bond series: good fiction.
Reports today are crediting Apple for moving quickly after a number of suicides at Foxconn last year put the iPhone maker’s largest supplier in media peril.
But what, exactly, did Apple do? From its progress report, released yesterday, it’s hard for me to tell. Yes, Apple upped its supplier audits to 127 last year from 102 in 2009. But is that significant? After all, Apple’s report does not say how many suppliers it has, or whether that number changed from 2009 to 2010. Of the 127 sites audited, 97 were looked at for the first time. For a company that relies so heavily on Third World labor, that’s nothing to be proud of.
Then there’s the little matter of the relationship between Foxconn and Apple. Apple reportedly owns the lines inside Foxconn’s Shenzhen facility. Foxconn builds almost all of Apple’s many lines of iPhones, iPads and iPods, not to mention its other PC products. Few other suppliers have the capacity to handle the volumes of these lines. Thus, can the two really be parted? And if not, then what teeth do Apple’s audits truly have?
A good friend forwards me one of the economic newsletter he gets, and this comment jumped out at me”
The unemployment rate of college grads in January was 4.2%, while for those with less than a high school diploma it was 14.2%. This is creating a major social problem of the haves and have-nots. By the way, do you think the increases in the minimum wage might have something to do with the elevated jobless rates of those with low skills, and their labor force drop-out rates? This is scandalous! Economics malpractice.
This doesn’t ring true to me. I think the columnist is falling for the statistical noise. Correlation is not causation, as they say. If you look at unemployment trends in the Baby Boomer era and the minimum wage adjusted for inflation, the overwhelming data do not support his thesis.
For example, the minimum wage was raised in 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1981. The unemployment rate dropped in 1979, rose in 1980, 1981, 1982 and 1983. This is the basis, I believe, for the current thinking.
In the 1990s, the minimum wage was raised three times: 1990, 1991 and 1996. Unemployment rose in 1991 and 1992, but fell to record lows in 1997-1999 — below 4%, in fact, a level few economists thought was possible.
But here’s the rub: Adjusted for inflation and using 2007 (the last available year) as the starting point, the minimum wage is actually 11% less than in 1997, 3.5% less than 1987, 26% less than 1977 and a whopping 35% less than 1967. Businesses are paying their lower-end workers less, and in many cases, much less that they did decades ago. In fact, adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage in 2007 was $4.41; in 1955, it was $4.39.
Federal Minimum Wage Rates, 1955–2009
| Value of the minimum wage |
Value of the minimum wage |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Current dollars |
Constant (1996) dollars1 |
Year | Current dollars |
Constant (1996) dollars1 |
| 1955 | $0.75 | $4.39 | 1983 | 3.35 | 5.28 |
| 1956 | 1.00 | 5.77 | 1984 | 3.35 | 5.06 |
| 1957 | 1.00 | 5.58 | 1985 | 3.35 | 4.88 |
| 1958 | 1.00 | 5.43 | 1986 | 3.35 | 4.80 |
| 1959 | 1.00 | 5.39 | 1987 | 3.35 | 4.63 |
| 1960 | 1.00 | 5.30 | 1988 | 3.35 | 4.44 |
| 1961 | 1.15 | 6.03 | 1989 | 3.35 | 4.24 |
| 1962 | 1.15 | 5.97 | 1990 | 3.80 | 4.56 |
| 1963 | 1.25 | 6.41 | 1991 | 4.25 | 4.90 |
| 1964 | 1.25 | 6.33 | 1992 | 4.25 | 4.75 |
| 1965 | 1.25 | 6.23 | 1993 | 4.25 | 4.61 |
| 1966 | 1.25 | 6.05 | 1994 | $4.25 | $4.50 |
| 1967 | 1.40 | 6.58 | 1995 | 4.25 | 4.38 |
| 1968 | $1.60 | $7.21 | 1996 | 4.75 | 4.75 |
| 1969 | 1.60 | 6.84 | 1997 | 5.15 | 5.03 |
| 1970 | 1.60 | 6.47 | 1998 | 5.15 | 4.96 |
| 1971 | 1.60 | 6.20 | 1999 | 5.15 | 4.85 |
| 1972 | 1.60 | 6.01 | 2000 | 5.15 | 4.69 |
| 1973 | 1.60 | 5.65 | 2001 | 5.15 | 4.56 |
| 1974 | 2.00 | 6.37 | 2002 | 5.15 | 4.49 |
| 1975 | 2.10 | 6.12 | 2003 | 5.15 | 4.39 |
| 1976 | 2.30 | 6.34 | 2004 | 5.15 | 4.28 |
| 1977 | 2.30 | 5.95 | 2005 | 5.15 | 4.14 |
| 1978 | 2.65 | 6.38 | 2006 | 5.15 | 4.04 |
| 1979 | 2.90 | 6.27 | 2007 | 5.85 | 4.41 |
| 1980 | 3.10 | 5.90 | 2008 | 6.55 | |
| 1981 | $3.35 | $5.78 | 2009 | 7.25 | |
| 1982 | $3.35 | $5.78 | |||
Elsewhere in the newsletter, the same economist nails what I think is the answer: that productivity (in the form of GDP) is at an all-time high despite 9% unemployment. The more educated one is, the easier it is to add multiples to the GDP. In other words, from what I have observed, if it comes down to employing a technician with a high school diploma or an engineer with a college degree, manufacturers are choosing that engineer because he can develop the processes, run the machines AND do the maintenance. The sense I get is companies are afraid of a double dip (and I don’t blame them for being worried; I am too) and that’s the biggest reason for hoarding cash.
Anyway, it’s still interesting stuff, especially for a Monday morning.
How’s this for smaller, faster and lighter?
As reported by The Engineer and others, US scientists plan to test printed circuit board technology mounted on the International Space Station exterior, a first step toward creating a new generation of satellites that are essentially self-contained microchips.
Some good, if basic, discussion of pick-and-place equipment techniques, both where they are at and where they are going, in Assembléon’s latest newsletter.