Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent signing of California's Workers' Compensation Reform Bill, which promises to save up to $7 billion a year for the state's employers, caused IPC's California Circuits Association (CCA) to applaud this decision.

"During the most recent Sacramento Day, IPC and many of its California-based members heavily lobbied the state's legislature on the overwhelming need to fix the state's broken workers' compensation system-one that doesn't sufficiently provide protection for injured workers and yet costs employers an alarming amount in premium costs," said Dick Crowe, IPC CCA's executive director. "The issue ranked as one of the most contentious facing California employers, and it's thrilling to see that our voices were heard in the state's capitol.

"Though just one of several industry groups pushing for this reform, IPC's CCA and its members collectively played an important role in bringing about success," Crowe cointinued. "Lobbying is a legitimate and concerted way to influence responsible legislation and it remains a key benefit of IPC membership."

Effective immediately, the reform seeks to simplify the current program for treating job-related injuries and provide financial relief to California's employers that presently face the nation's highest workers' compensation costs.

Under the new law, workers will now be required to seek care from a list of doctors approved by employers and insurance companies for treating injured workers. Also, workers' rights to seek a second opinion will be limited, as an independent medical review board will be established to resolve disputes and allow injured workers to switch physicians.

Efforts from IPC to convince California's Senators and Assemblymen of the need for workers' compensation reform began at its first Sacramento Day event in 2003, which gave all companies in the electronic interconnection industry with operations in California an opportunity to lobby Assembly Members and Senators. Over the past two years, IPC also arranged frequent plant visits for state legislators and prompted its California members to participate in various letter writing campaigns.

www.calcircuits.org

www.ipc.org

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Agilent Technologies Inc. (Palo Alto, CA) introduced a high-speed production-test solution for identifying the maximum number of product defects at the lowest cost. BIST Assist 6.4 is built on technology that enables signal integrity testing of high-speed serial links up to 6.4 Gb/s using a cost-effective loopback/built-in self-test (BIST) approach

To date, testing devices with high-speed links has forced a compromise. Traditional at-speed test approaches of automated test equipment (ATE) and bench instruments offer the highest fault coverage but at a price too high for volume manufacturing of cost-sensitive, consumer-driven devices. Loopback test offers low cost but does not provide adequate defect identification. According to Agilent, its technology has the fault coverage of traditional ATE at the low cost associated with loopback.

The device provides a solution for high-volume testing of high-speed interfaces such as PCI Express, Serial ATA, Fibre Channel and Serial RapidIO. These high-speed interfaces are becoming pervasive in current and future-generation convergence devices such as media PCs, disk drives, set top boxes and digital video recorders. The continuing trend toward miniaturization and higher functionality drives the need for faster system links on a device or on a circuit board.

The new technology provides at-speed level control and precision and adjustable jitter injection up to 430 ps, exercising high-speed link performance and expanding fault coverage. Because it is a calibrated solution within the test head, it is both a robust production and an efficient characterization solution. Each card provides four loops (16 differential pins) operating up to 6.4 Gb/s.


 www.agilent.com

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FEINFOCUS (Stamford, CT), a global supplier of Microfocus x-ray inspection systems and tube technology, has agreed to be acquired by COMET AG (Flamatt, Switzerland), a supplier of conventional x-ray tubes for non-destructive testing (NDT), security, analytics, food inspection/irradiation and semiconductor applications. FEINFOCUS is known for microfocus and nanofocus x-ray inspection for electronics assembly, semiconductor and medical device industries, as well as NDT and the emerging micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) markets. 

 

This acquisition represents a partnering of microfocus and conventional x-ray technology.  A provider of sealed x-ray tube manufacturing, COMET will be acquiring a provider of demountable, or open, x-ray tube technology. 

 

Both companies seek to capitalize on continuing opportunities from industry trends toward smaller feature sizes, 3-D computed tomography (CT) applications and the departure from film-based imaging. 

 

FEINFOCUS chief executive officer Lance A. Scott said, "With well over 50 years' experience in high voltage/high vacuum x-ray tube manufacturing, COMET's proprietary know-how will accelerate FEINFOCUS' development of next generation microfocus and nanofocus X-ray technology. FEINFOCUS' proprietary system development know-how and award-winning service support will extend COMET's ability to offer proven sub-system solutions to its valued customer base." 

 

Organizationally, there is little duplication between the two companies. FEINFOCUS will immediately expand its presence in Asia through COMET's Shanghai office and COMET will take advantage of FEINFOCUS' North American presence in Connecticut and California. 

 

FEINFOCUS was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Garbsen, Germany. COMET was founded in 1948. In 2003, COMET employed a staff of 245 in its headquarters and its three subsidiaries in the US, France and China. 
 

www.feinfocus.com

 

www.comet.ch

 

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