News
TEMPE, AZ, Sept. 2 - The rate of growth in the manufacturing sector slowed in August but new orders and production remained strong. Manufacturing grew for the 15th consecutive month, said the Institute for Supply Management, based on its monthly poll of the supply chain.
The PMI, a leading measure of economic activity, was 59%, down 3 points and breaking a string of nine straight months above the 60% level. Still, the PMI was above the benchmark 50% level for the 15h straight month. New orders fell 3.5 points and production dropped 6.6 points.
Respondents focused on energy costs, price inflation in basic materials and slowing sales growth. "While the near-term outlook remains positive, both the inventories and customers' inventories indexes show signs of inventory building," ISM chairman Norbert Ore said. "Such a build may be justified if it is to meet additional sales demand, and if new orders and production remain strong."
Prices manufacturers pay were higher, driven by customer demand and energy costs. Customer inventories remain "too low," ISM said, although the rate of decline decelerated significantly during August. Backlogs rose, as did new export orders and imports.
Electronic Components and Equipment, and Industrial and Commercial Equipment and Computers were among the sectors reporting growth.
April May June July August
PMI 62.4 62.8 61.1 62.0 59.0
New orders 65.0 62.8 60.0 64.7 61.2
Production 67.0 64.8 63.2 66.1 59.5
Inventories 44.8 49.3 51.1 49.9 51.7
Customer inventories 40.5 37.0 39.0 37.5 45.5
Backlogs 66.5 63.0 58.5 58.0 55.0
Source: Institute for Supply Management, September 2004Next month in Hong Kong is electronicaAsia, an exhibition for components, assemblies, production and display technology. The Oct. 13-16 show will be held concurrently with the Hong Kong Electronics Fair.
electronicaAsia is the largest electronics manufacturing show is Asia. According to show producers Messe Munchen, last year's electronicaAsia had more than 28,000 trade visitors, up 75% from 2002, and 552 exhibitors.
Automotive electronics will take top billing at electronica 2004 in November in Munich. Automotive accounts for 17% of the overall semiconductor market in Europe, 30% in Germany, thanks to demand for engine-control units, electronic-dashboard instrument clusters, remote keyless-entry systems and airbags.
electronica 2004 will be held Nov. 9-12.
In a press statement NEMI said the new guidelines include input from suppliers that wasn't in the May version.
Joe Smetana, principle engineer, advanced technology for Alcatel and group chairman, said, "[T]here are a number of options for reducing the risk of tin whiskers, and we recognized the need for supplier feedback on the practicality of implementing the various approaches. Our goal was to address a complex issue in a practical manner with a justifiable approach while limiting the testing requirements in an effort to save time and money but still reducing the risk of tin whisker failures."
Among the updates:
- Changed significantly the "qualification by similarity" matrix, dramatically reducing the number of tests (and associated cost) required by an individual supplier.
- Eliminated the annual requalification requirement, replacing it with a simpler, supplier-defined, whisker monitoring requirement.
- Eliminated requirements for control samples that produce whiskers.
- Provided options in the specification if tin-lead reference samples are not used or available for baseline whisker length comparisons.
- Provided guidelines for optical inspection qualification as a possible alternative to SEM (scanning electron microscopy).
- Eliminated preconditioning requirements for components with nickel underplating, which cuts sample sizes for components using nickel as a mitigation practice and also reduces the test time required for these components.
- Allowed an option for bias testing (when required) to be conducted in sockets.
"As long as the fundamentals and various contributing factors to tin whisker growth are not fully understood, acceptance of lead-free tin finishes always carries some risk, particularly when relating testing to field life," said Smetana. "However, we believe that the combination of mitigation practices, testing and plating process control reduces the risk associated with tin whiskers."
The revised requirements have been submitted to IPC and JEDEC to consider for standardization.
Not everyone agrees that new efforts are needed, however. Several solutions were devised in Japan as much as 20 years ago; see Jan Vardaman's column in Circuits Assembly in September for details.
The Tin Whisker User Group is comprised of 11 large manufacturers of electronics assemblies that agree that pure tin finishes (and other high-tin content lead-free alloy finishes) present a risk of tin whisker-related failures in electronics, particularly those demanding high reliability.
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