Category Archives: Laying It Out

Off-grid thoughts from a burned-out designer turned editor.

Updating the Design Standard

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IPC-2221A, as most designers know, was released in 2003. Since that time, lead-free has gone from a niche technology to a mainstream one, and its added a generous dose of complexity to the design decision tree.

In November, IPC-2221B was, at long last, released, and it’s a good opportunity to reflect on the process of how standards are developed, and why it took nearly a decade to get the latest rev out.

In that time, for example, the task group responsible for J-STD-001, the industry soldering standard, came out with a “D” and an “E” revision, and work is underway on the “F” revision.  Certainly the changes lead-free brought about affected electronics assembly at least as much as design: it’s hard to pin the problem solely on technical reasons.

My experience working on the J-STD-001 suggests the difference in publishing frequency comes down to how the respective task groups call a halt to the changing technology. Going back to when Jerry Rosser was chair of the J-STD-001, for example, that group has a 15-year-plus history of calling a hard stop to new technical additions after a set period of time. Jerry knew the standards would always be disrupted by new technology, and therefore he initiated a plan — still followed — whereby after a period of months, the spec would be frozen, and the only changes from that point to the revision in progress would be to ameliorate the grammar and, on the rare occasion, fix legitimate technical disputes. If, for example, new chip-scale package requirements weren’t ready by the hard stop, they were tabled for the next rev. The ensuing document was never perfect, but it was far more timely than would have been otherwise possible.  To wit, the task group published four revisions, plus one amendment, in one decade alone.

Based on interviews with the coordinator of the IPC-2221, a different tack was taken, which slowed the process considerably.  It took the task group several years before calling a hard stop. Another difference is the decision to include a fair amount of tutorial in the design standard, whereas the soldering task group stripped all that info out years ago, opting instead to segment it into a separate handbook.

Now, to be sure, there is a design guide, but it was published in 1992 and has never been updated. I understand the philosophical reasons for doing things the way the design task group has done them, but in the interest of faster time-to-market, I think it’s time to reconsider whether there’s a better way. Thoroughness has value. But so does expediency.

Remembering Finch

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Zuken has compiled a number of touching sentiments from friends of the late Alan Finch, credited with developing the first shape-based autorouter.

Finch, of course, wrote the landmark paper that followed up his Racal-Redac colleague Ulrich Lauther, who conceived a router with no defined cell size.

Look closely and there’s a mention of Pete Waddell, UPMG president and an admirer of Finch.

 

Predictions for 2013

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It’s been awhile since I used this space to make any predictions about the coming months, but the end of the year is always the logical (if cliched) time to do so.

So here goes:

  • The migration of manufacturing to North America will accelerate, and the mainstream media will begin to report that OEMs are also reestablishing internal production lines.
  • Flextronics will buy at least some of RIM.
  • Robots as substitutes for human labor will be heavily hyped but lightly used.
  • Ousted Altium founder Nick Martin will hook on with a budding cloud-based software company and build a PCB CAD tool.
  • At least two new PCB CAD vendors will emerge.
  • Electronics manufacturing companies will end 2013 with less cash in the bank but brighter prospects for the future.

 

 

 

 

Reasons for Enthusiasm Real

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Even the most pessimistic industry-watchers should be curious at least over the shifting attitudes toward bringing production back to the US.

The New York Times today published an extensive piece looking at the top-down change — from President Obama on down — in the nation’s outlook toward manufacturing. Researchers at MIT and elsewhere are promoting the benefits of keeping makers and thinkers together. “The manufacturing process itself is going through an innovation revolution,” said Stephen Hoover, chief executive of Xerox PARC, noting the emphasis on smaller numbers of highly skilled techs who run sophisticated and heavily automated lines.

Earlier this week, Mike McNamara told listeners at an investment conference that higher (and unabating) labor costs in Southeast Asia is making the decision process over where to put its plants “more interesting.” The Flextronics chief executive said he could see production coming back to the US. “[O]ver time, as [labor]  costs continue to go up, you’ll probably see more things get pushed back in the USA,” McNamara said.

Even Foxconn is showing some appeal (for a change) for its push toward automating its factories. Maybe Jim Raby’s vision for true lights-out manufacturing will finally be realized?

A decade ago, at Wall Street’s urging, companies followed the herd to China. Not enough thought was given to the ramifications of chasing lower labor costs, and my guess is that we will be feeling the pain of these short-sighted decisions for some time to come.

But given the prospects for higher levels of automation and a more balanced approach to regionalization, it’s been years since the industry was so exciting.

Looking for Good Engineers?

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Hi all,

I don’t typically do this, but I know two great engineers who very recently became available.

One’s (Dallas area) a test hardware engineer with 15 years’ experience at two major semiconductor companies; the other (Tampa area) has extensive operations and management experience with OEMs and EMS companies. I would strongly recommend either person for a variety of roles. Please let me know if you’d like more information.

The Value of Doing It Right … the First Time

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Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with a gentleman that, though now retired, spent a long and illustrious career in marketing and advertising. Some of his best known clients were Wendy’s restaurant, Budweiser and Coca-Cola. Since part of my job is marketing (in which I have no formal training) I took advantage of this opportunity to learn all I could. As he was going through some fundamentals with me, I was having trouble applying the theory to our printed circuit board business.

We discussed why people would buy from Transline over a competitor. I spit out the expected answers of price, service, expertise, etc.  I could tell, from his expression, that I was not only missing the bulls- eye, but the entire target. How embarrassing! He then asked me what kind of problems we solve for our customers. With animation and passion, I explained what I have said many times here on this blog: People keep inadvertently using board houses that don’t specialize in RF/MW and it costs them a tremendous amount of time, money and grief. He smiled, and I knew I had stumbled onto something. He said, “That is what you do for customers…you make it right The First Time!”

Do it right the first timeIt was so stupidly simple, how had I missed it all this time?!  It is alarming to think about the waste of time, energy, money, resources, and stress that can all be avoided by doing one simple thing:  getting it right the first time!

I saw this illustrated recently when my husband’s 2004, used, BMW had an irritating problem. It has one of those electronic keys that you insert into a slot and simply push a button to start the car. Randomly, the car began to not start up—but only intermittently. It was frustrating to get in the car and not know if it was going to start or not. One day, the entire car shut down while my husband was driving it, which crippled all the electronic systems. Luckily, he was in a parking structure. He took the car to his mechanic/friend’s shop.  I felt this was a mistake because this shop doesn’t often work on high-end imports. I suggested to my husband that we just pay the big bucks and go to a BMW dealer who would thoroughly understand the electrical system and fix it quickly.

As I feared, the car sat for over two weeks at his buddy’s shop while the electrical guy tinkered and tried to resolve the problem. Meanwhile we played musical cars at our house that now has 2 teen drivers and 4 wildly conflicting schedules. What a hassle! We were getting ready to take it to our local BMW dealer, and take the financial hit, that we knew was going to be ugly. Instead, I did some searching online for an independent BMW repair shop in our area. I was ecstatic when I came across a small shop whose owner was trained by BMW, in Germany, on electrical systems! My husband took the car over the same day. The owner asked him where his second key was. My husband explained that he bought the vehicle used and that it only came with one key. The owner said he wouldn’t touch the car until we bought a new key, explaining that there was a good chance that the key was the problem and that buying a new key would be far less costly than doing a full electrical analysis on the car. Sure enough, when we got the key a few short days later, the car ran like a charm—saving us time and a boatload of money.

The lesson for me here is, that if we would have just gone to the specialist in the first place, we would have saved time, money and lots of inconvenience—because he was an expert and he did it right the first time!

Since my meeting with the marketing-guru, I’ve gained a fresh appreciation for the enormous value Transline brings to the RF and Microwave market by being experts, and doing things right the first time. We are like that German-trained mechanic. We bring insight, expertise, time savings, resource savings, and stress saving services every day, by knowing our products and doing things right the first time—but not charging exorbitant prices to do it!

This was an insightful lesson that I wanted to pass along. Not just to promote Transline, but to invite you to think more deeply, yet simply, about what value you bring to the table—as an individual or company. The clearer and simpler we can make our message, the easier it will be for others to grasp what value we have in respect to resolving their problems. Face it; simplicity and clarity in our complex industry, and world, are desperately needed!

I would love to hear your feedback on this subject. Please comment here, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at [email protected].

Best wishes! Judy

Have a Happy Thanksgiving

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UP Media will be closed the next couple of days in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday While you will still see a few updates to the Circuits Assembly and PCD&F websites during that time, we will not publish the  PCB UPdate newsletter on Friday.

We’d like to take this moment to thank all our loyal readers and (for those to whom this applies) wish you a happy — and safe — Thanksgiving.

No More Cookson

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If you read this announcement about Cookson splitting in two the first question must be, what will this mean for the organization?

My take is, not much. Here’s why:

1. The company will remain public, and the shareholders are the same. (Under the proposal, Cookson shareholders get one share in each of the two new companies.) Had this been an MBO or private equity group, I would expect slash and burn. But the transition as planned should bring much-desired stability to the new organization.
2. The upper management isn’t changing. Had Cookson Performance Materials group CEO Steve Corbett left, I might think differently. But Corbett, who joined Cookson in 1990 and has run Enthone since 2002 and both companies since 2004, is highly responsible for the existing management and operational structure. He knows what he is doing, knows the markets and understands the brands.
3. The debt is manageable. Alent (the new name of the former Cookson Performance Materials) will “get” about one-third of Cookson’s £451 million ($727 million) worth of debt. Given the new company’s sales of £418 million ($675 million) and profitability, it should be able to swallow that meatball.
4. The brands are intact. The Alpha Metals and Enthone brands are well-recognized and respected worldwide. Indeed, after spending some time trying to beef up the somewhat unwieldy Cookson Performance Materials name, the company reversed gears and has been working over the past year to rebuild those individual brand names. Perhaps this was in anticipation of the demerger, but either way, the strategy was well-timed.

In fact, the only casualty I see in all this is the Cookson name, which is, believe it or not, more than 300 years old. One wonders whether the Cookson name was seen as a negative by either of the spinoff companies.

And so goes Cookson. From its founding by Isaac Cookson in 1704 as a collection of metal and glass businesses to its aggregation of a herd of electronics assembly equipment and materials companies in the 1980s and 1990s to the respective divestitures of Speedline, then Polyclad and its Precious Metals business, Cookson has always been in a transition of some sort. It’s hard to believe, though, that this is its final move.

‘Board Talk’

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Today we launched Board Talk, the bulletin board for the Printed Circuit Board industry, a service brought to you by UP Media Group, Printed Circuit Design & Fab and CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY magazines.

The bulletin board — the URL is www.theprintedcircuitboard.com — is open to anyone in the industry. We’ve set up categories for PCB design, fabrication, assembly, market data, trade shows and press releases. Members are invited to create their own topics (threads) for discussing anything industry related that they have on their mind.

We also are happy to announce an agreement with the IPC Designers Council to offer Board Talk as a communications center for news, announcements and meetings, plus information on the Designers Certification program.

Please check it out!

Why France Publishers are Putting the Screws to Google

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More than any other single factor, Google changed the model for publishing, and now some countries are fighting back.

France is threatening legislation that would force Google to pay publishers for indexing their stories on Google News. In response, Google said it would stop indexing stories from French publishers if such legislation is passed.

This is the latest in a string of volleys against the world’s largest search engine, which has long sought ways to leverage its advantage in one area (search) to also dominate another (advertising). In Brazil, for example, the nation’s publishers have decided to opt out of Google’s index, rationalizing that the dubious promise of higher traffic wasn’t worth the loss of a captive market.

Most anti-trust courts have found such behavior illegal; Google thus far has managed to skirt any real trouble, thanks in part to the presence of Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing. But Google aggregates so much content, and circumvents so many paywalls, it’s difficult to prove that there’s fair value to a given participant.

This is something to watch as most publishers, including UP Media, have been batted around like a mouse in a cat’s clutches Google, and few of us will feel much empathy if the search giant were to be forced to play by the rules.