TOKYO -- The Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center last week was crammed with attendees wanting to see the latest in electronics components, equipment and materials. Really a co-location of six different shows, Nepcon World is geared toward the EMS and OEM customer, and offers myriad suppliers in one place.

Aisles were packed and business was brisk. Unlike some shows, booths tend to be smaller and the focus closer to the customer’s immediate needs. While many manufacturers do roll out their latest technology, others reserve their big splash for the more extravagant exhibitions. The show has grown by almost 20% in exhibit space, with over 1,000 companies participating, but the estimates for attendance of 50,000 may well have been significantly exceeded as evidenced by the difficulty in navigating the aisles.  Attendees are primarily from Japan, but several exhibitors commented on the huge number of Chinese engineers and managers.

The Internepcon Japan section was the largest, with the emphasis on PCB assembly. Pick-and-place manufacturers such as Yamaha, Mydata, Panasonic and IPulse all had large booths, and reported strong interest. Reflow soldering and materials handling manufacturers were also busy.

Materials suppliers were abundant, many with very large booths and regularly scheduled presentations that were almost always well-attended. Selective soldering and robotic soldering manufacturers such as Pillarhouse, Japan Unix and Tutsuya conducted live demonstrations.

Test and Inspection was across the hall and was a dense nexus of activity. Over 75 companies exhibited systems, and the atmosphere was exciting as companies competed with advanced technologies. In x-ray inspection, several companies hinted at computerized tomography applications, applying lessons learned in the medical field toward manufacturing applications. Processing power and algorithms are king, so there is much work to be done. However, the groundwork is being laid and it was a glimpse of the future not seen often in the West.

Show organizer Reed Exhibitions added a laser and optics section this year. As the interconnect adds functionality, these are a natural extension of the integration of the assembly into smaller and more flexible packages. Think 4G.

EMS and ODM houses were also exhibiting. It was a new Industrial Revolution. Taiwanese companies such as Hon Hai and Chinese companies such as Haier all look to Japan for the new and innovative packaging technologies. HTC in Taiwan is plugged in to the cutting edge, looking not to the West but regionally for breakthrough technologies that will enable the next great innovation. CMK and Casio exhibited a new form of manufacturing enterprise, the Integrated Package Manufacturer, where actives and passives are integrated into the printed circuit board. They can offer embedded wafer level packages, SiP’s, and ASIC + memory modules, and heatsinking, all of it in an assembly that measures an 1 x 1". The end-product exhibited was a watch for athletes that measures speed and distance. As Dr. Seuss said, Oh the Places You’ll Go!.

Nearby, Clover touted shipping more than 3 million IPs with embedded large-scale ICs since 2003. This is truly amazing technology that enables whole new generations of consumer, industrial, medical, or military products.

This author did not go to this show expecting revolutionary products. In fact, most of what I saw was evolutionary. But in Japan, unlike the West, the attention to detail, to technology, and to cost is completely focused. The result is amazing.

The technology was in most cases invented elsewhere. MIT Lincoln Labs was designing embedded circuits in the late 1950s. Most of the lab work is still being done at Western universities and institutes, but the drive for quarterly profits and just plain greed have isolated the Western economies to the point that there is a serious structural imbalance. A some point in the past 15 years, Western OEM and manufacturers for the most part decided to stop innovating. The thrust was, We can buy it cheaper. Guess what? If you don’t have chips in the game, you lose.

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