OULU, FINLAND – Scanfil's second quarter sales of €195.5 million ($213.5 million) represented a decrease of 19.7% from last year's second quarter.

LAGRANGE, OH – Vexos is reportedly closing its manufacturing facility here and laying off more than 60 workers.

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – The discounted price for the PCB West 2024 technical conference ends Sept. 7, conference organizers said. From Sept. 8 through Oct. 8, registrants will pay the advanced conference price, which is $100 more than the “early bird” rate.

TAIPEI – Foxconn saw July revenue climb 22% year-over-year, the second-highest gain the company has recorded for the month.

WASHINGTON – Global semiconductor industry sales totaled $149.9 billion during the second quarter, an increase of 18.3% compared to the second quarter of 2023 and 6.5% more than the first quarter of 2024, SIA announced.

JASPER, IN – Kimball Electronics has completed the sale of its Automation, Test and Measurement business to Averna, and said it plans to focus on its core EMS business.

BIÑAN, PHILIPPINES – Integrated Micro-Electronics announced sales of $275.67 million for the second quarter, a decrease of 20% from last year's second quarter.

Speaking, as we were last month, about artificial intelligence and its adoption into electronics design and manufacturing, we observed that a current obstacle to implementation is the use by vendors of customer data in order to build their models.

And while vendors insist the data are aggregated and anonymized, said customers, naturally, have been generally circumspect over the perceived cost of the lessons they have learned – often painstakingly – being used to enable competitors, not to mention ultimately paying those same vendors for the courtesy.

To that I will add the musings of Neil Thompson, who is the director of the future tech research project at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Thompson argues that AI systems must not just be capable of performing “human” tasks but also must overcome the costs of implementation, including redesigning processes and methodologies. “There are a lot of places where ... humans are a more cost-efficient way,” he says.

TEMPE, AZ – Benchmark Electronics announced $666 million in revenue for the second quarter, down 9.1% from last year's second quarter.

BANNOCKBURN, IL – Total North American EMS shipments in June were down 2.4% compared to the same month last year, according to IPC's North American EMS Statistical Program. The book-to-bill ratio stands at 1.32.

GLENVIEW, IL – ITW's Test & Measurement and Electronics segment saw $678 million in revenue for the second quarter, down 3.1% from the same quarter last year.

NOIDA, INDIA – Dixon Technologies saw year-over-year revenue grow by 101% for the first quarter of its fiscal year, totaling INR65.8 billion ($758.8 million).