MUNICH – Productronica, the biennial electronics manufacturing trade show, will take place Nov. 13-16, in Munich.
 
The exhibition, perhaps the world’s largest electronics manufacturing show, will include production technologies for semiconductors, displays, printed circuit boards, materials processing, mounting technology, product finishing, measurement and testing, quality assurance, EMS, productions logistics and material flow technology. 
 
The event is expected to bring more than 1,500 exhibitors and 44,000 attendees.
 
Highlights will include organic electronics, photovoltaics, and “green” electronics. The EMS Village will feature outsourcing information for development, production, logistics and services. Reliable product tracking (traceability), cost-cutting ERP, materials/MES, and other types of goods management and logistics will be featured. 
 
Productronica will feature special shows and live demonstrations. The special show titled System-in-Package will present the functional adaptation of electronics to the application environment. Two Productronica forums will detail industry challenges and corresponding solutions.
 
For more information, visit www.productronica.com and www.global-electronics.net. 
 

BANNOCKBURN, IL – North American PCB shipments fell 2.6% in January and bookings dropped 18.7% year-over-year, the IPC said. The book-to-bill ratio remained under parity at 0.91.
 
Rigid shipments were down 3.5%, and bookings were down 19.2% year-over-year. Flexible circuit shipments were up 14.3%, while bookings were down 10.6%.
 
The rigid book-to-bill ratio was 0.91; the flex circuit book-to-bill ratio edged up to 0.93.
 
Rigid PCBs make up an estimated 85% of PCB sales in North America.
 
The results include 11% of foreign-produced boards.
 

SAN JOSE – A call for papers has been issued for the International Wafer-Level Packaging Conference scheduled for Sept. 17-19, in San Jose.  The conference program will include workshops, and business and technical sessions on wafer-level packaging, 3D/stacked packaging and test. The organizers seek 200-word abstracts with proposed topics. Abstracts should be submitted before Apr. 10 to Melissa Serres at melissa@smta.org.  Full details may be found at http://www.smta.org/iwlpc.
 

MINNEAPOLIS – The 2007 Medical Electronics Symposium will be held May 2-3 in Bloomington, MN. A tabletop exhibition will take place on May 2, and a half-day workshop symposium on May 1 will cover issues of reliability in medical electronics and medical device applications. Other topics of the symposium include RoHS/WEEE impact on design; wireless telemetry; process development case studies; substrate materials for medical electronics; design challenges; environmental constraints; emerging technologies; advanced cleanliness requirements; advanced packaging for medical electronics; reliability assessments; software security; safety & risk management; warranty analytics; risk communication and software regulation. The keynote, Neuromodulation – Approaching the Tipping Point, will be presented May 2 at 11:30 am by Christopher Chavez of Advanced Neuromodulation Systems. For more information, please visit http://www.smta.org/education/symposia/symposia.cfm#medical.