News
HARRISBURG, PA - Tyco Electronics Corp. will close its Austin PCB manufacturing plant by July 1, and lay off about 190 employees, according to a news article.
Mike Ratcliff, a spokesman for Tyco, told a local paper that work from the 240,000 sq.-ft. plant will be transfered to other Tyco plants. The Austin location has stopped taking orders for PCBs but will fulfill existing orders.
"The printed circuit group has been
evaluating how best to operate the business, reduce costs where
possible and eliminate duplication," Ratcliff says. "It's a competitive
industry."
Tyco purchased the plant from Raytheon, which in turn obtained it through a large purchase of the defense business from Texas Instruments.
There has been no report at this time of other Tyco operations closing down.
TOKYO -- Kyocera Corp. has made plans to outsource its cell phone production in North America to Flextronics International and cut 1,700 jobs at its mobile phone division to turn the loss-making business around.
The latest restructuring follows Kyocera's announcement in March that it will quit its struggling digital camera operations this year. The company will outsource production at U.S. unit Kyocera Wireless Corp. to Flextronics from late May.
The biggest exhibitors were Universal, Assembleon and Bosch Rexroth. Some notable local suppliers chose to forego exhibiting while competitors made the trip to Boston. For example, of the three leading screen printer suppliers in North America, NJ-based DEK exhibited, although Speedline Technologies and EKRA America, both of which are based in the Boston suburbs, did not.
Numerous bare-board fabrication (MEI, Bare Board Group, Circuit Connect, Printed Circuit Corp., Sierra Proto Systems) and assembly companies (Masstech EMS and LightSpeed Manufacturing among others) were on hand. Most told Circuits Assembly that business growth was modest year-to-date and orders for lead-free boards were few and far between.
- Juki Automation, the second leading seller of placement
machines worldwide, rolled out a pair of selective soldering units.
Called the 300L and 400L, the machines come with internal spray or
drop-jet fluxers, nozzles ranging from 4 mm to 30 mm and preheat
capability, and the 400L has a three-stage inline system for high-speed
automated soldering. The 400L can also be customized for three
miniwaves or a combination of one miniwave and one full wave.
- Datron Dynamics, a
supplier of milling and routing equipment for assemblers, showed off
its new low-cost (under
$47,000) CNC machine for milling and engraving. The mini-Raptor has a
51 x 51" footprint and comes with a 60,000 rpm spindle, a solid granite
table and a 3-tool changer feed. It is said to reach rates up to 400"
per minute.
- Excelta is offering the Smart Tweezer, a slick little device that among other things IDs the capacitance,
resistance or inductance of the surface mount device being picked up.
Once a major convention in its own right, the expo
has morphed into a solid regional show. It was in its third location in
three years, having shifted this
year to the brand new Boston
Convention Center, a
mammoth (510,000 sq. ft.) hall located on a pier just east of downtown.
Official attendance numbers have not yet been released.
SAN JOSE - Although U.S. semiconductor manufacturers still have 47% of
the worldwide chip market, only 20% of state-of-the-art production facilities
now under construction are in the U.S. Lower tax rates and incentives that
reduce the cost of capital in other countries - not lower labor costs - are the
principal reasons why most new manufacturing facilities currently being built
are outside the U.S., according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.
"A
dramatic shift in semiconductor manufacturing is now under way," said SIA
president George Scalise in testimony before the US-China Economic and Security
Review Commission in Palo Alto,
CA, on April 21.
"Approximately two-thirds of the 300mm wafer fabrication facilities now
under construction worldwide are in Asia, with a significant portion of those
facilities in China.
Chinese government policies - not lower labor costs - are the principal factor
in a differential of more than $1 billion in the 10-year cost of building and
operating a 300mm wafer fab in the U.S.
versus China,"
Scalise said.
"Even
an 80% differential in wage rates between China
and the U.S.
is not a major factor in plant location decisions because semiconductor wafer
fabrication facilities are capital- and technology-intensive," Scalise
continued. "Government incentives such as favorable tax treatment and
other assistance programs account for approximately 90% of the cost
differential. Like it or not, the reality is that government incentives play a
major role in where investment takes place. Given the critical importance of
semiconductors in driving U.S.
economic growth and ensuring our national security, maintaining a competitive
semiconductor manufacturing capability and a supporting ecosystem must be an
important priority for America's
federal and state governments."
Scalise
said the U.S.
needs a coordinated strategy to reduce the cost differential created by foreign
government tax and incentive policies. He recommended a number of specific
actions that Congress should take to change policies that discourage investment
in capital-intensive manufacturing facilities in the U.S., including:
•
Providing federal tax holidays to match the tax holidays offered by overseas
competitors.
• Making
the R&D tax credit permanent and enacting enhancements to make it more
effective.
•
Allowing companies to expense high-tech manufacturing equipment in order to
improve cash flow and stimulate investment in new equipment.
•
Re-examining international taxation rules and considering alternatives to the
current rules on taxing foreign-source income.
•
Enacting significant tax rate reductions to make manufacturing costs in the U.S. more
competitive with costs in other countries.
"Leadership
in semiconductor technology is ours to keep, or ours to lose. The investments
and policy changes needed to allow U.S. manufacturers to compete in
the face of foreign incentives designed to lure investment offshore are neither
easy nor inexpensive, but it is vital that we make them. The first step is that
we must choose to compete," Scalise concluded.
The full
text of the SIA testimony can be found at https://www.sia-online.org/downloads/testimony_china_050421.pdf.
PHOENIX - Avnet Inc. has agreed to acquire Memec Group Holdings LTD in a stock and cash transaction valued at $676 million, including the assumption of $194 million of Memec debt. Combined, the distributors will have annual sales of more than $8.5 billion.
Under the terms of the agreement, Memec investors will receive a total of approximately 24.011 million shares of Avnet common stock plus $64 million in cash. The transaction, which is expected to generate cost savings of $130 million annually, is scheduled to close in 60 to 90 days.MANKATO, MN - Winland Electronics Inc., an EMS firm, announced first quarter revenue of $7 million, up 35.3% from last year. Net income increased 71.4% to $374,535 for the same period.
The increase was related to new product line items integrated from OEM customers during 2004 combined with improved sales of
the company's proprietary products.
It was a record quarter for the company, and its 13th consecutive profitable
quarter.
Gross profits for the quarter were $1.7
million, up 24.3%. Gross profit decreased as a percentage of net sales
from 26.4% in Q1 2004 to 24.2% in the first quarter
of 2005, due to higher costs from new
product designs and billable
engineering projects.
Income from operations increased 68.9% to $629,203 due to a significant increase
in sales. Total operating
expenses increased 7.5% for the first quarter to $1.1 million.
During the quarter Winland's largest customer, Select
Comfort, increased its purchase commitments by $4.5
million.
The company completed the quarter with $587,007 in cash and a current ratio of 2.75 to 1.
