Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - Features

LAFOX, IL -- Arthur Buckland has resigned as president, COO and board member of Richardson Electronics, effective immediately. According to the company, he is leaving to pursue personal interests. Edward Richardson will take his place until a permanent replacement is found.

The company also discovered errors in financial accounting at one of its Italian subsidiaries, according to a release on PR Newswire. The company has not yet determined the impact of these errors for any specific period, but it estimates that the errors will reduce stockholders' equity by approximately $3 million to $4 million.

While the company continues to evaluate the magnitude and impact of these errors, its financial statements for the previous three years and their interim periods should not be relied upon, according to the report. The company is evaluating the adequacy of its accounting for income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions for prior periods and is in continuing discussions with the present and former auditors concerning these matters.

As a result of ongoing evaluation of these accounting errors, Richardson does not expect to file its Form 10-Q for its fiscal quarter ended March 4, 2006 by the filing deadline.

Tokyo -- JPCA Show 2006, sponsored by the Japan Electronics Packaging and Circuits Assoc., will take place May 31 – June 2 at Tokyo Big Sight. The event is concurrently held with the 2006 Microelectronics show, JPCA and JIEP keynote addresses and Jisso Technology Symposium.

Over 500 exhibitors will showcase technologies for an expected 100,000 international visitors. The keynotes will include Shigeaki Mizushima, group general manager, AVC Liquid Crystal Display Group of SHARP, who will address “SHARP’s Strategy for LCD Business.” Also, Takashi Shigematsu, managing officer of Toyota Motor Corp., will talk about “Current Situation and Future Prospects of Automotive Electronics.” Dr. Hayao Nakahara, a popular PWB consultant will make a presentation on “World Electronic Circuits Industries Today” on the final day.

An eco-Pavilion will introduce environmental friendly products and green technologies. AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) will also exhibit its latest development presentations at a special booth.

To register, visit jpca.jp

Taiwan -- BenQ has consolidated its Asia and Europe handset product houses in a move to speed up product launch time, according to Digitimes.

The product houses provide functions including technical product management, R&D, strategic procurement and supply chain management.

Jochen Eickholt, current head of BenQ mobile houses for Europe and Latin America and Irwin Chen, president of BenQ's wireless business unit, will jointly lead the new team, Digitimes said.

VANCOUVER -- Nam Tai Electronics has invested $30 million in the acquisition of machinery, new production lines, etc., to develop internal manufacturing operations.

To support its existing flexible printed circuit (FPC) subassembly business, the company has invested in FPC manufacturing, which involves the etching of a copper printed circuit onto a flexible plastic film and assisting customers in the design of the circuit layout.

San Jose -- With 116 billion ICs produced in 2005, the value of the worldwide IC packaging market was $23.1 billion in 2005, reports Electronic Trend Publications. Of this worldwide total, 37 billion ICs were assembled by contract packaging companies for a value of $9 billion.

The report predicts that the worldwide semiconductor industry will ship 193 billion ICs in 2010. At that time, the value of the IC packaging market will be $34.6 billion.

OAKLAND – Dell has announced it plans to triple the amount of product recovered from customers by the end of 2009 and released its annual sustainability report outlining current progress and future goals for the company’s corporate responsibility efforts.

The company’s environmental design plans were laid out in a new report. Other major goals include:

Introduction of a new supplier audit tool to help ensure good workplace practices throughout the company’s supply chain.
Global compliance with the RoHS directive.
Enhanced product energy efficiency through improvements in product design; and
Tripling the recovery and recycling of retired computers by the end of 2009.

Dell’s annual sustainability report for fiscal year 2006, which ended Feb. 3, outlines the company’s progress on environmental and social measurements and was issued today in conjunction with the Coalition of Environmentally Responsible Economies (Ceres) conference here.

Major achievements for the company’s recently completed fiscal year include:

· Launch of the company’s first high-volume, RoHS-compliant¹ desktop motherboards. Dell exceeded its goal of shipping three million of these motherboards per quarter by the fourth quarter of 2005.

· Recovery of 36.1 million kgs of product for reuse or recycling from customers and company operations. More than half of this total came from customers, increasing Dell’s recovery of product from customers by 72% over fiscal year 2005 volumes.

· Completion of Dell’s Supplier Self Assessment Questionnaire by 90% of targeted suppliers, exceeding the goal of 50% of target group completing self-assessment.

Earlier this year, Dell issued a chemical-use policy that set forth a plan to phase out the use of all brominated flame retardants in desktop, notebook and server plastic parts. Dell also plans to expand its existing ban on the use of brominated flame retardants in other products and peripherals developed after June 1, 2006.

In 2005 Dell shipped more than 8.4 million RoHS-compliant, Pb-free desktop motherboards.

Dell increased product recovered from customers for reuse or recycling, as measured by weight, by 72% over 2005. Dell has set a target to recover 125 million kilograms cumulatively by the end of 2009, nearly three times as much as Dell recovered this year.

Dell plans to launch customer product recovery services in Latin America and China this year.

A copy of the company’s sustainability report is available at dell.com/sustainabilityreport.