News
Three-Five Systems Inc. (TFS, Tempe, AZ), has hired key employees and acquired the customer base of Integrex Inc. (Bothell, WA), a privately-held electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company. TFS will immediately begin working with customers to transfer existing programs from Bothell to the Redmond facility; the process is expected to take approximately six weeks.
The agreement is the second EMS transaction by TFS in the Northwest in the past 15 months. TFS acquired the EMS company ETMA (Redmond, WA) in December 2002 and maintains operations in the Redmond location.
Integrex was founded in 1999 as a full-service EMS company providing turnkey manufacturing services, including design, new product introduction (NPI), printed circuit board assembly (PCBA), system integration, test and after-market support. Primary investors included Benaroya Capital, Fluke Venture Partners and Sunrise Capital. Representatives for the investor group indicated that several companies competed to obtain the Integrex business and TFS was selected because of its existing presence within the Northwest regional customer community, combined with strong offshore manufacturing capability and a solid balance sheet.
Jack Saltich, chief executive officer of TFS, said, "Integrex has penetrated certain market segments, including military applications, that represent target growth areas for TFS. We believe we can expand upon this business by leveraging our manufacturing quality in Redmond with our high volume efficiencies at our Asian manufacturing locations and thereby continue our initiative to become a dominant EMS provider in the Northwest."
TFS is buying the raw material inventory of Integrex as needed to begin manufacturing products for its new customers and is providing Integrex with an up-front, one-time payment to offset customer transfer costs. TFS is not acquiring Integrex's manufacturing facility in Bothell, and it is not expected that the transaction will generate a goodwill asset for TFS.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
The Surface-Mount Technology Association (SMTA, Minneapolis, MN) has announced the formation of the SMTA International (SMTAI) technical committee for 2004. The SMTA will again co-locate its SMTAI conference on Sept. 26-30 with Assembly Tech Expo (ATExpo) in Chicago, IL, at the Donald Stephens Convention Center.
The 2004 team of industry professionals includes Gerry Adams; Donald Banks; Dr. Srinivas Chada; Dr. John Evans; Gail Flower; Rich Freiberger; Dr. Reza Ghaffarian; Dr. Ken Gilleo; Steve Greathouse; Lisa Hamburg-Bastin; Jeff Kennedy; Andrew Mawer; Dr. Julian Partridge; Dr. Viswanadham Puligandla; Greg Reed; and Dr. Paul Vianco.
They will be led by veteran conference chair, RadiSys process engineering manager Rob Rowland. Rowland is the primary author of Applied Surface Mount Assembly, and he has conducted classes for the SMTA Academy and the SMTA annual conferences at SMI and SMTAI.
Tracks for this year's conference include Assembly, Business Issues, Components, Emerging Technologies, PCB Technology and Process Control. New topics for 2004 include Design for Success, Battery Interaction, Lean Manufacturing, Medical Electronics, Setup Reduction, Process Modeling and Supplier Engineering.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
IPC (Northbrook, IL) has announced the release of IPC-2581, Generic Requirements Printed Board Assembly Products Manufacturing Description Data and Transfer Methodology, and recognizes Valor Computerized Systems Ltd.'s (Yvane, Israel) commitment to this effort.
The IPC-2581 standard is the result of three years of industry effort, initially started by the National Electronic Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) and then followed by IPC's standardization effort. The standard is in XML schema and was built on Valor's ODB++ format, with added data concepts from IPC's GenCAM standard (IPC-2511B). The committee effort, chaired by Dana Korf, Sanmina-SCI Corp., put the final touches on the IPC-2581 in February.
"By donating their ODB++ format to the IPC committee working on IPC-2581 and by providing volunteer committee support from their development group in Israel, Valor made tremendous contributions to the development of this new standard," said David Bergman, IPC's vice president of standards and technology. "The time and travel commitment to the two-year standard was significant on Valor's behalf, and IPC would like to recognize Valor's support of the industry."
Bergman added, "With the release of the new standard comes the need for implementation efforts. The goal has always been to develop more intelligent data transfer, and now verification vehicles need to be developed, as well as a large numbers of translators. With Valor's support, IPC has completed the format. Next, it's critical that the companies that set the direction for this effort to push for adoption and now commit themselves to use the new format."
IPC plans to include the development of golden boards of product in the IPC-2581 standard format. These examples will facilitate the industry's implementation of the new format. The National Institute of Science and Technology will then check the quality of the golden boards prior to release.
For more information, contact DavidBergman@ipc.org.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
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