News
Dykes will continue to advise Flextronics through March.
"I cannot begin to tell you how important Bob has been to the development of Flextronics as a leading company in the EMS industry, both as a director and as CFO," said Michael Marks, chief executive. "Bob served as my most trusted advisor during the rapid development of the company over the past seven years."
Smach has been Flextronics senior vice president of finance since its acquisition of the Dii Group in April 2000.
HP spends an estimated $43 billion each year --- the largest in the world -- on supply chain procurement. The company seeks ongoing supply chain cost reductions of the $1 billion to $1.3 billion annually through 2007, DB wrote, the bulk expected to come from lower procurement costs.
HP, which sources 88% of its' spend with its top 40 suppliers, has plans to shrink its supplier base even more. In doing so, the firm will retake control of various purchasing that the company had previously outsourced to EMS firms, DB wrote.
HP is demanding its EMS firms compete on their manufacturing capabilities, rather than procurement. "While HP implemented this process over a year ago to get better clarity into its costs (and eliminate the CMs' profit from material cost arbitrage), we believe HP is accelerating this move and continuing to pressure pricing at the EMS level," DB analyst Chris Whitmore wrote.
Furthermore, the company is pushing toward greater standardization across its hardware platform, reducing the number of parts it uses.
PARIS, Dec. 13 -- LG Electronics last week opened an R&D center here and will staff it with more than 100 researchers, part of its strategy to crack the top 3 of the handset industry market by 2006.
At the center, LG will work on multimedia features for its next-generation (4G) GSM and WCDMA phones. The company will also use the location to enhance its links with major European service providers like Vodafone, Hutchison, T-Mobile and Orange .
LG also has R&D centers in San Diego, Beijing, Bangalore and Moscow.
In a statement, James Kim, president for European Headquarters, said, "[T]he establishment of R&D center in Europe has created an environment in which we can efficiently respond to R&D issues in the region. We will position our research center as the R&D hub penetrating European mobile phone market by increasing the number of researchers by more than 100-plus people next year."
Merix will buy Data Circuit Systems Inc., a provider of quickturn board fabrication services, for a total purchase price of $43 million, consisting of $41 million in cash and a $2 million note. The move effectively triples Merix's customer base.
For its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Data Circuit Systems had net income of $2.3 million on sales of $27.7 million. The firm posted an EBITDA of $5.8 million.
In a press statement, Merix chairman and chief executive Mark Hollinger said, "Merix has been focused on growing and enhancing its quickturn business for some time. While we have made significant progress in this endeavor, this combination enhances our market opportunity by providing added scale, tripling our customer base, diversifying our end markets, adding experienced rep firms to complement our direct sales force, and augmenting our quickturn service offering to include 24 hour turnaround."
Delays are still being reported at transit hubs and importers continue to rush shipments in advance of unfilled quotas, Trans Global Logistics said in an email note.
Fuel surcharges and freight rates remain high as stabilizing oil prices and moderating shipping demand have been offset by the weak U.S. dollar. Today, OPEC announced a $1 per barrel increase for oil.
Activity remains strong at Taipei and Shanghai, where new customs clearance procedures went into effect Dec. 1 and products to be shipped are reportedly delayed up to three days.
China is expected to see a bump in activity in the next four weeks, leading up to the Chinese New Year on Feb. 9. "We expect markets in China to be very active in early January as importers rush to take advantage of quota elimination on many apparel categories. Export activity will also spike in early February because Chinese factories will shut down during the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday," Trans Global wrote.
In a press statement Siemens L&A EA chief executive Tilo Brandis said, "The partnership between ASYS and Siemens is defined by developing creative, flexible solutions and the permanent optimization of the business relationship."
The relationship between ASYS and Siemens dates to 1995. In 1997 ASYS designed and developed a lift system for connecting a line of Siemens' placement systems in a parallel manner. To date ASYS has supplied more than 1,000 of the systems to Siemens.
The Siplace Partnership Award recognizes business partners that benefit users of Siemens' products or services.
The electronics company has chosen a SnAgCuIn alloy for its high-reliability communications and medical gear and larger PCBs, according to Nikkei Shinbum News.
The company chose the solder for its melting temperature, tensile strength, thermal cycling and aging characteristics, the report said. SnAgCuIn melts at 204C, well below the point of other lead-free alloys. The alloy is supplied by Singapore Asahi Chemical and Solder Industries Ltd.
According to the report, another lead-free alloy -- this one SnZn -- failed to pass Hitachi's tests.
Hitachi said that while indium costs more than other metals, the price point is "only 20 to 30%" higher and that all lead-free alloys cost more than SnPb solder.
Japanese OEMs have been early adopters of lead-free alloys. According to the report, NEC, Sharp and Fujitsu use SnZn, while Panasonic uses SnAgBiIn.
The award honors SMTA members who stand out as leaders within the association.
In a press release, SMTA said Tsoi's devoted hours of time, personal financial support and leadership so that colleagues could benefit from SMTA membership via a local chapter. He was the first student from China to earn SMTA Certification and joined other chapter officers in Minneapolis for a Leadership Forum last March.
Frank, of FeinFocus GmbH, received the award for his paper "Detecting and Analyzing Wafer Bump Voids with X-ray Inspection," in which he disclosed an x-ray imaging technology said to detect and measure voids within solder bumps on chips. The paper also revealed software that determines component viability based on preset threshold values.
The event was sponsored by SMTA. Papers detailed leading-edge IC packaging and test technologies with special emphasis on 3D stacked packaging.
The x-ray inspection system detailed in Frank's paper converts 3D voids to measurable 2D images, enabling the system to calculate the ratio of the size of the void within a solder bump to the total mass of the ball. The system can also determine the largest linear distance between two points in the void and compare the result with the diameter of the ball.
The paper will soon be online in at smta.org.
Hangzhou Eastcom Cellular Phone Co. will purchase $20 million worth of SMT equipment and maintenance over the next three years, Autron Pte. said. Autron will also help manage Hangzhou's spare parts inventories.
The new center houses process R&D and remanufacturing facilities, spare parts, component engineering and demo lines.
With the refurbished equipment, the company also provides original documentation, genuine spare parts, software and component upgrade, and warranty and service support.
Engineers are trained at the original manufacturer's factories, Autron said.
The company estimates the market for refurbished equipment will reach $500 million in 2005.
In a statement, C. L Tan, group executive chairman, said ""We have spent the last 1½ years tediously building on our product and process knowledge, market research in the industry and working closely with customers to understand their concerns, fears and needs. The rebuilt equipment division is an important high margin growth engine of our solutions business model and we intend to dominate this space for long time to come."
Autron provides electronics assembly equipment and services including distribution services and manufacturing.
iSuppli forecasts worldwide semiconductor sales will hit $237.1 billion in 2005. The firm said last month that sales would grow 9.6% in 2005.
iSuppli cited lower sales forecasts for electronics equipment, which is expected to grow 6.2% in 2005, down from 10.1% this year.
The firm also cited growing chip stocks: excess inventories in the supply chain doubled last quarter, to $1.6 billion, iSuppli said.
2006 will mark the low point for IC sales, followed by a recovery in 2007 and 2008, iSuppli predicts.
Press Releases
- Indium Corporation Technical Expert to Present at SiP Conference China
- Flex Announces Kevin Krumm as Chief Financial Officer
- Green Circuits Enhances Inspection Capabilities with New DAGE Quadra 5 Pro X-ray System
- Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler Elected Chair of Semiconductor Industry Association