Economy the Talk at IPC Midwest
Published: 25 September 2008
by Mike Buetow
SCHAUMBURG, IL – IPC Midwest opened Wednesday to modest attendance and plenty of concern over the economy.
The second-year trade show attracted light to modest traffic, aided by the ongoing technical conference and standards writing meetings.
Very little in the way of equipment or materials was introduced at the show. That freed plenty of time to discuss the economy, particularly the massive financial markets meltdown, which have most parties convinced will take at least two quarters to dig out from under. Some expressed concerns over the ability of customers to obtain loans for necessary capital improvements.
The trade group IPC gave out over 70 awards during the week, primarily to individuals for their contributions to standards writing. Among the recipients were Nancy Chism of Flextronics, Barry Morris and Debbie Wade of Advanced Rework Technology, Norma Moss of L-3 Communications, Zenaida Valianu of Celestica, Daniel Foster of STI Electronics and Teresa Rowe of AAI Corp. for contributions to the IPC-7711/7721B Training and Certification Program; Dudi Amir and Dr. Raiyomand Aspandiar of Intel, Werner Engelmaier of Engelmaier Associates, Michael Green and Karen McConnell of Lockheed Martin, George Oxx of Flextronics, Rob Rowland of RadiSys, Vern Solberg of Solberg Technical Consulting, Kristen Troxel of Hewlett-Packard and Bob Willis of The SMART Group for contributions to IPC-7095B, Design and Assembly Process Implementation for BGAs.
