With each year comes a new model of the Apple iPhone. And like clockwork, a few months before the product release, purported images and details of the new phones (and other Apple products) start showing up on various social media.
Would it be right to be suspicious that these “leaks” are simply ploys to generate interest?
A diode can be put on a a PCB in one of two ways. It’s only got two pins (usually — see, I already have a caveat). I’ve written about them a few times before. I’ve got a sampling of those posts here. But first,
Good marking:
Bad marking:
The diode schematic symbol is always a good choice. If there isn’t room for that, “A” for anode or “K” for cathode work well too. Why “K”, and not “C”, you may ask? Because “K” kan’t be konfused with a capacitor.
Okay. Enough ranting for now. Just use the diode schematic symbol, “A”, for anode, or “K”, for cathode; and always look at the data sheet for the exact part number.
Duane Benson
1 cricket per chip
The PCB fabrication industry is older than most of us still working. It is overdue for modernization. We have not seen transformational manufacturing changes in the PCB bare board industry during the past 15 years.
What we have seen is the installed capacity moved to China. It has been reported that 60% of global board fabrication now comes from mainland China or Taiwan. This move created a forced shift in how boards are purchased, and consequently created new demands in communication and logistics. Specifically, language, time zone, and cultural considerations. Bigger companies with China-based feet on the ground could adapt easily; the rest of us had to learn new skills.
I am suggesting that the rest of us modernize and rethink our supply line strategy.
Some may remember the evolution of the electronics component industry. First, component manufacturers sold directly to OEMs. Gradually, customers and component manufacturers found that a better path was through a local distributor. Arrow, Avnet, Future, DigiKey, and many others were born out of this efficiency. Today, it is an exception to buy directly from a component manufacturer.
PCB fabrication is difficult for distributors because every board is custom. Repeat: every board is custom. Custom equals high potential for error, which equals close technical review required.
So, buyers must go to China directly and slog through the variety of China sources. With this come the multiple challenges of accountability, communication, logistics and culture. The most dangerous of the challenges is having picked a supplier that occasionally (or often) sends subpar boards and provides no recourse or no response to your complaint. Do you really want to commit such a critical part of your BoM to the lowest China bidder?
The modernization of the PCB industry is not in processing, but in supply chain. A new category of value-added distributor is evolving in the same way the component distributor evolved … to make things easier. We call it “Managed Manufacturing Services.”
Think of it as a value-added distributor of printed circuit boards. This concept can greatly improve the supply chain for both customer and China manufacturer, but only if they really add value.
What are the important values, and how does this approach add value?
Technical support. The value-added distributor must be your expert design reviewer, capable of counseling you and quickly fixing the errors.
Only technically trained PCB teams really understand the manufacturability challenges of bare boards. With the technology of new IC packages pushing toward smaller geometries, new thinking is required about designing for manufacturability. So, your value added distributor has to be technically trained to provide this service.
Communication. The value-added distributor must be capable of clearly and cleanly communicating with a factory in a different country.
We have been working with offshore factories for a long time. We learned through hard knocks that developing a strong relationship with your counterpart in Asia is critical. I call it “Pitcher-Catcher.” Whether a fastball or a curveball, the two communicate in one cohesive motion. This takes time to develop and not every factory gets it.
Time zones can work to your advantage. We pitch everything to China by 5 pm Pacific and have answers at 6 am the next day. Your distributor must know the factory requirements well enough that only a few questions (EQs) come back, lessening the need for middle of the night conference calls.
Accountability. Your value-added distributor must have carefully vetted and audited the factories they use. They must be US corporations with financial accountability to their customers.
Slogging through a variety of factory options is not a good idea. Jumping from one to the next based on price and email pressure is also not a good idea. It wastes time and invites disastrous quality issues. Customers with little or no knowledge of what makes a solid factory are at particular risk. Yet most customers fall into this category.
If you have someone on staff with experience in this area, you can send them to China to visit multiple factories, but unless this person has in-depth knowledge of what makes the difference between okay and fantastic at the granular level, it is waste of $10,000. It takes deeply experienced people to see the difference. It takes board manufacturing experience.
From the China manufacturer’s side, it is just like the component manufacturers of old. It is much more efficient to deal with a small handful of companies who service the US market than it is to staff and service everyone. The culturally smart ones are beginning to see this and actually do view us as distributors for them. It is a proven supply-chain solution.
Following the model of the component distributors, we can modernize this PCB industry. We can improve efficiency, quickly adopt new technologies, and capture lower costs all by modernizing the supply chain. Welcome the value-added PCB distributor, or as we call it Managed Manufacturing Services.
Thomas Smiley is president, Precision PCBs; [email protected].
Wikileaks this week released a trove of materials purportedly from the CIA which demonstrate a range of methods used for spying on unwitting individuals. Among the revelations were how-to’s on accessing (read: hacking) most popular operating systems including Android and Apple. The CIA, it is alleged, has figured out how to bypass the encryption on a host of common apps including Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram, and even get around many antivirus programs designed to spy on the spies.
As it turns out, that TV set you have hanging on your family room wall might well be watching you. Worse, it was intimated that a vehicle’s electronics system could be hacked, rendering the car uncontrollable — with potentially devastating consequences.
It doesn’t take much to make the leap from hacking consumer and automotive electronics to overtaking machine language software systems. And that should be of paramount importance to those working on industry standards for Industry 4.0, including IPC’s Shop Floor Communication Standard Subcommittee and Mentor Graphics (OML).
As important as machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is, security should be the priority.
This news item from the Associated Press cuts to the heart of the matter when it comes to reshoring of manufacturing and why skeptics (including this humble writer) abound over whether Foxconn, among others, truly intend to set up large manufacturing plants in the US:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump brought two dozen manufacturing CEOs to the White House on Thursday and declared their collective commitment to restoring factory jobs lost to foreign competition.
Yet some of the CEOs suggested that there were still plenty of openings for U.S. factory jobs but too few qualified people to fill them. They urged the White House to support vocational training for the high-tech skills that today’s manufacturers increasingly require — a topic Trump has seldom addressed.
“The jobs are there, but the skills are not,” one executive said during meetings with White House officials that preceded a session with the president.
The truth is there are hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs available in the US today. The US Census Bureau puts the figure at just shy of one million. In talking with circuit board fabricators and assemblers over the years, the biggest impediment to hiring is not lack of work but rather lack of qualified workers.
My belief is that the demographics of electronics design and manufacturing resemble a bimodal distribution (two humps), whereby workers over 50 years old represent the largest group by age and workers aged 20 to 30 the second largest. Those aged 30 to 50 are the smallest group (the valley in the graph, see below). My thesis is that workers in that segment were coming online right about the time the North American electronics industry cratered — late 2001 to early 2004, leaving them either out of jobs or unable to crack the then much-smaller workforce that was left after the tech recession.
(The graph below illustrates the basic concept, although in reality the right hump would be higher than the left as there likely are more workers over 50 than under 30 in electronics design and manufacturing today. But you get the idea.)
With the older wave starting to retire, coupled with an upturn in the industry’s fortunes starting around 2008, a new wave of workers has entered the industry. And while we often speak of the lack of millennials in manufacturing, a tour of Silicon Valley area shops takes the air out of that conversation. There, workers don’t ask where the young people are; they just look around — they are everywhere. And manufacturers are catering to them, setting up coffee (and more) bars inside their plants, creating workspaces that resemble outdoor atria that offset the traditionally sterile assembly lines.
Moreover, there is some concern that widespread move of manufacturing back to the US will only accelerate the implementation of robots, leaving thousands of operators on the sidelines. In anticipation, robot makers are ramping capacity, in some cases by as much as two times. This is not without precedent. Those of us who were around when PCB fabrication and assembly migrated to China en masse in the late 1990s/early 2000s recall how common semiautomatic machines were then. It was a nod to the Chinese government, which was adamant about protecting employment.
What’s your experience? Is your company weighing a return to the US? If so, will it come with an increase in automation?
(Please, no political comments.)
What can we expect from the OEM markets this year?
While long-term visibility remains cloudy, the outlooks from major ODM/EMS companies give some perspective on the near-term expectations.
Looking at publicly traded EMS and related supply chain (connector suppliers and component distributors), median supply-chain sales came in ahead of implied fourth-quarter guidance, according to data from Deutsche Bank. For the December quarter, sales increased 5.1% year-over-year at the median, almost double that of guidance (2.6% growth).
Likewise, implied first-quarter median sales guidance is 4.3% growth year-over-year which points to continued growth for the supply chain.
“In general, supply chain growth continues to be driven by company-specific new program ramps, although management teams are seeing a more positive demand environment,” DB said.
Two players that just announced quarterly earnings, Celestica and Flextronics, agree that storage and server sales will slump. Another, Sanmina, sees that end-market as stable.
The related communications and telecom sector is seen by Celestica as a big gainer (up 20%), but not so much by Flex (down five to 10%) or Plexus (down 4 to 7%) or Benchmark (down 15% or more). Sanmina called the market stable.
Automotive has, ahem, driven much of the sales growth for many EMS companies for the past eight years. Flex and Fabrinet both expect the surge to continue. So does Kimball, for which automotive makes up 42% of its revenue.
Consumer is expected to take some hits. Flex sees a 20 to 30% drop, Jabil foresees a smaller loss, and Celestica expects flatness.
Medical/healthcare is a mixed bag. Jabil forecasts a 2% drop, IEC also expects it to be lower, while Ducommon and Plexus say flat. Benchmark, Sparton and Jabil see growth, likely in the low to mid single digits.
As for military/aerospace, IEC and Sparton see them as growing, while the larger EMS companies (Celestica, Sanmina, and Ducommon) see them closer to flat. Plexus is most bullish on the segment, at 14 to 16% growth.
Only Flex is bullish on industrial, forecasting 10 to 15% growth. Ducommon sees it as flat to 1% higher, while Celestica, Sparton and IEC don’t expect much either. Plexus predicts a 4 to 7% drop. Benchmark expects sales to fall in the high single digits.
Many EMS companies don’t break out semiconductor, test or instrumentation. An exception is Benchmark, which sees strength there, with anticipated growth or 10% or more.
Finally, remember when computing drove seemingly everything? Benchmark expects that sector to fall 30% or more. It’s a sign of how far computing has dropped in significance among North American-based EMS’s in that many of them now group it as part of consumer.)
Or Broome County, NY. Or Harrisburg, PA.
Despite repeated media reports of an impending Foxconn migration, the company will remain what is has been since its founding in 1974: Chinese.
Sure, there will be satellites in key spots elsewhere: Juarez. San Jose. São Paulo. But not the American countryside, and not in big fashion, as is being widely reported by international media.
If Foxconn were to bring one of its Death Star-like campuses to the US, it would buck not just every single manufacturing trend, but outright common sense. Here’s three quick reasons why to expect that won’t happen.
Simply put, there aren’t that many qualified engineers and technicians available in and around the American countryside to fill a campus that large. (Even China, which supposedly graduates two to three times the number of students in engineering and related fields each year doesn’t appear to have sufficient manpower to handle those employment estimates.)
The US Census Bureau, which tracks such things, notes there are nearly one million job openings at US manufacturers today. And a single company is going to add 5% more to that figure? Not likely.
There certainly aren’t that many available workers in Utica (population 61,000) or Harrisburg (population 50,000). The latter, famous as home to the Hershey chocolate company, should know to resist Foxconn’s temptations. On second thought, maybe it does:
“One location Foxconn already is familiar with in Pennsylvania is Harrisburg, where the company has a small operation and, in 2013, announced intentions to spend $30 million on a new plant that would employ up to 500. For that project, Havens said, DCED officials met with Foxconn representatives on various occasions and showed them potential locations for the planned site, but the project did not come to fruition.”
As part of the same announcement in 2013, Foxconn said it would invest $10 million for research and development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. When asked whether Foxconn ever delivered on its pledge, CMU spokesman Ken Walters said Wednesday the university had no comment.”
According to my sources, Foxconn is outsourcing, or seeking to outsource, work to other EMS companies in Southeast Asia. That doesn’t sound like a company that intends to take on manufacturing consumer products in North America. Pointedly, Gou himself told Reuters of news Foxconn would expand in the US: “There is such a plan, but it is not a promise. It is a wish.”
So with apologies to Utica, Harrisburg and other fine American cities, we say if you are waiting on Foxconn, don’t hold your breath.
P.S. For a great breakdown see this piece: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/uzqTrvW0hMxgkSKCnh41dP/US-faces-risk-of-Foxconn-panel-plans-that-dont-add-up.html
I spoke today with a longtime friend in the PCB industry who shared that multiple times in the past year his company had made inquiries to various suppliers about various lines of equipment. They specifically asked for quotes on certain machines. And yet this company, which pays its bills and has a long track record, never received the quotes. Followup calls went unanswered for months.
I asked the names of the persons at the suppliers to whom my friend’s company made their inquiries. I’m sorry to say, they were names I recognized. Good, knowledgeable people. Old-timers, all. Hangers on. Definitely folks that no longer initiate contact. What some would call the “working retired.”
I’m no ageist. There’s no question the electronics industry today can sap one’s energy. While the end-product are nothing short of exciting, it’s been a long time since something came along to upend the manufacturing side. And even in good years business isn’t growing so fast that the prospect of making Zuckerberg-like coin is enough motivation to hustle. I get it: Once you get in the rut, it’s tough to get out.
Here’s my plea. If your passion for building, promoting or selling the industry is gone — consider hanging it up. Find a younger person, train them and step aside. If you want to maintain your industry friendships, show up at a trade show once or twice a year. But don’t let your inability to let go impede your company, or your industry.
Out of energy? The PCB industry needs you … to retire!
“Huawei won’t move manufacturing to America.”
The headline sounds, well, weird, almost like “Tiffany’s not robbed.”
But the crux of it is a tale of global politics and business tactics growing ever-more-fascinating by the day.
In short, at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, the head of Huawei’s consumer business group issued a statement saying the smartphone maker doesn’t think much of the incoming Trump administration’s habit of calling out companies that build and import product to the US.
While Trump has thus far had mostly automakers in his sights (GM, Toyota, Ford), Apple has been the poster child for the war of words over trade. By speaking out at CES, the world’s largest technology trade show, Huawei is among the first companies, and likely the biggest, to go on the offensive.
“If [companies] move all manufacturing to the U.S., some manufacturing is not good for US companies, because costs will likely increase,” said Richard Yu, who was also a keynote at the show. “If you move all that [low-cost] manufacturing to the US, you’ll damage the US.”
Huawei has an uneasy history with the US. Its head is a former Chinese military officer Ren Zhengfei, and the company was banned from supplying telecom equipment to US government buyers after a Congressional committee accused the firm of spying on behalf of China. It is also the third-largest smartphone OEM in the world, and given the easy nature of using those devices as tools for capturing user habits and data, that is hardly less troubling.
More complex, Huawei, like Apple, depends heavily on Foxconn as a contract manufacturer. Although based in Taiwan, Foxconn founder and chairman Terry Gou is a strong supporter of China. He also is reportedly considering a run for president in his native Taiwan, a move that if successful would likely strengthen the ties between the island and mainland — and potentially further complicate already precarious relations between China and the US.
Until the new administration is officially installed in two weeks, the machinations are mostly bluster. But the chatter shows no signs of abating, and the campaigns for — and now, against — Made in America are just starting to heat up.
Each year we review the 10 most-viewed features of PCD&F and CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY. This year, we’ll start with CA. Keep in mind that the counts are not adjusted by the date of publication. Therefore, an article published in January has an advantage over one published in December. The month of publication is listed in parentheses.
10. “New Embeddable Technologies,” by Chris Reynolds. (January)
9. “Applying Lean Philosophies to Supply Chain Management in EMS,” by Wally Johnson. (February)
8. “GHS: The Final Countdown,” by Scott Mazur. (Note: This isn’t his only entry in this year’s top 10.) (January)
7. “Field Performance of pH neutral Cleaning Agents,” by Umut Tosun, Jigar Patel, Kalyan Nukala and Fernando Gazcon. (September)
6. “Online Bath Monitoring,” by Rebecca Dettloff. (March)
5. “Via-in-Pad Design Considerations for Bottom Terminated Components on PCB Assemblies,” by Matt Kelly, Mark Jeanson and Mitch Ferrill. (February)
4. “How to Use the Right Flux for Selective Soldering Applications,” by Bruno Tolla, Ph.D., Denis Jean and Xiang Wei, Ph.D. (April)
3. “Blurred Lines,” by Mike Buetow, a review of the Top 50 EMS companies from 2015. (April)
2. “Extreme Long-Term PCB Surface Finish Solderability Assessment,” by Gerard O’Brien and David Hillman. (July)
1. And the most-viewed article on CircuitsAssembly.com this year (by 35 views) was “Energy Reduction in the Electronics Facility” by Scott Mazur. (March)
Thanks to everyone to contributed this year, and thanks especially to all our loyal readers!