On the eve of the industry’s largest PWB show, I have begun to reflect on what the American expats whom I will meet here are doing for their Greater China employers. I wonder what they could not have done in the United States, and the reasons why. Now the game has changed. Labor costs are up. Automation is advancing. Business continues to consolidate rapidly as “blue chips” have vanished. Others are in jeopardy. Those remaining are few and far between.

One thing is certain. The days when Asian companies would buy old, tired American facilities and fix them up as a potential method of market entry are long gone. They have learned that it is better to invest in the newest technologies at the outset and not waste their funds patching and fixing near-obsolete operations. This could be one of the motivations for some American corporations to design and install new state-of-the-art automated and “green” captive PWB operations. One such venture is even predicting a bare board cost reduction of greater than 30% over his currently outsourced panels.