Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - White Papers

News

Attitudes were upbeat at the annual SMTA/IMAPS Upper Midwest Industry Appreciation Day on June 2, 2004, as attendees and exhibitors looked to network with customers and gather sales leads during the small exhibition. The one-day event is designed to showcase surface-mount materials and services from adhesives to laser stencils to flip chip underfills.

Hosted at 3M (St. Paul, MN) headquarters for the third time, the show sold out, attracting more than 170 attendees and 55 exhibitors.

"Compared to a year ago, business is picking up and we're a lot more hopeful than we were last year at this show," said Richard Brooks, technical manager at Indium Corp. of America, supplier of electronics assembly materials.

Representatives from other companies—including JMW Enterprises and 3M—agree that business has been picking up.

"We were fortunate that we remained busy even during the downturn due to the nature of our business [selling pre-owned electronic assembly equipment]," said Brian Ebbinger, sales manager for JMW Enterprises. "Electronics manufacturing is booming across the board. We're anticipating that business will continue to increase throughout the year."

"Business in electronics has been very promising," said Greg Eick, market development manager for 3M Electronics Markets Materials Division, a supplier of adhesives, tapes, abrasives and specialty fluids and gases to electronics manufacturers. "We've seen double digit sales increases every quarter. With the help of great networking opportunities like this show, we continue to gather solid leads and meet our goals."

"This is our first year exhibiting and we're pleased with the number of quality leads we've received," said Cris Smith, national sales manager for Global Stencil, a supplier of surface-mount stencils, inspection templates and customized parts. "The return on investment at smaller shows like this more than covers the cost of attending. The show also provides a personable venue to meet with current and potential customers, which aligns directly with our philosophy of offering a high level of customer service."

www.smta.org

www.3M.com/electronicmaterials

International Manufacturing Services Inc. (IMS, Portsmouth, RI), a manufacturer of thick film resistors and substrates to the electronics industry, has announced the appointment of DM Associates Inc. (Columbus, OH) as the company's representative in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and western Pennsylvania.

DM Associates is a manufacturer's representative in the central U.S. with sales offices in Columbus and Cleveland, OH, and Indianapolis and South Bend, IN.

IMS also recently announced the availability of lead-free compatible thick film chip resistor components for customers transitioning to lead-free circuit assembly. The products feature lead-free end terminal metallizations designed for compatibility with all lead-free alloys and flux systems currently available.

www.dmassociatesllc.com

www.ims-resistors.com

Preco Electronics (Morton, Illinois), an electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider serving middle-market original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), announced the launch of its plan to incorporate six sigma principles throughout the company. Recently, the senior management of Preco attended a weeklong program to understand more about integrating six sigma into the company's existing lean philosophies.

While the existing lean manufacturing initiatives have eliminated waste and improved performance at the Morton facility for the past four years, six sigma provides tools to utilize process data in all areas of the business to reduce variation in execution and improve quality while reducing costs to the customer.

The unification of these philosophies will provide Preco Electronics with: an evolving framework to insure that customer critical requirements are understood and operation focus is developed to address them; a program to identify the root cause of issues and process inefficiencies and solve them permanently; and a data-driven culture based on continuous improvement.

www.preco-morton.com

The International Microelectronics and Packaging Society (IMAPS) announced that Alec J. Babiarz, senior vice president and a founder of Asymtek (Carlsbad, CA) will be the keynote speaker at the 37th International Symposium on Microelectronics to be held Nov. 14-18, 2004, in Long Beach, CA.

Babiarz also serves as vice president, new business development for Nordson Corp., Asymtek's parent company. Since 1983, Babiarz and Asymtek co-founders Robert Ciardella and Philip Maiorca have built the company from a small operation into a manufacturer of dispensing equipment worldwide. In 2004, Asymtek received Intel's highest honor for its suppliers, the Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement Award.

"We are very pleased that Alec accepted our invitation," said Maurice Lowery, IMAPS 2004 General Chair. "Alec's experience and insight with Asymtek—and as an IMAPS Corporate member—make him the ideal candidate to provide the information our attendees are looking for. His first-hand involvement from the very beginning gives him the credibility we need to help guide the principals in other companies through the successful growth process."

Asymtek supplies automated fluid dispensing systems, specializing in semiconductor, surface-mount and electronics packaging applications.

www.asymtek.com

www.imaps2004.org

The SIA forecast that revised semiconductor growth from 19% and 6% growth in 2004 and 2005, respectively, to 29% and 4%, should negatively impact equipment sales for 2004, according to the report, "The Global Market for Equipment and Materials for IC Manufacturing," recently published by The Information Network (New Tripoli, PA), a market research company.

"Negative sentiment from analysts and forecasts of a relatively flat 2005 from the SIA are pointing to eventual pushouts and cancellations of equipment," said Dr. Robert Castellano, president of The Information Network. "Semiconductor manufacturers are already overly cautious from the last severe downturn, and fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD factor) about growth in late 2004 beyond will affect their decisions to go ahead and purchase more tools they may not need by the time they are delivered."

According to the company, the industry is 9 months into the current equipment upswing, while semiconductor sales have been in an up cycle since January 2002—a period of 28 months. Historically semiconductor and equipment inflections occurred within 3 months of each other.

However, the company believes the industry went through a paradigm shift during the past recession, moving to more aggressive die shrinks and to 300 mm processing to increase production. To avoid massive inventory buildup, semis will not be investing frivolously in equipment, but will instead be closely monitoring real demand. If demand drops, real or perceived, the equipment market boom will be over before it really got a foothold.

"As capacity utilization is the percentage of wafer starts (and we know they've been increasing for 28 months) to capacity, and capacity is showing no growth, it results in increasing capacity utilization," said Castellano. "But why didn't capacity grow when revenues (billings) increased dramatically for the past two quarters? Is capacity utilization really increasing to stratospheric levels as IC manufacturers would lead us to believe at a time they are raising prices?"

Company forecasts from November 2003 called for the front-end equipment market to grow 21% in 2004 and 11.4% in 2005 before dropping 7.9% in 2006, based partly on SIA's forecasts of 19% and 6% growth for 2004 and 2005 and on IC fab capacity.

www.theinformationnet.com

Anticipating engineers' concerns with confusion on the production lines about mixing lead and lead-free materials, Kester (Des Plaines, IL) has announced a change in its lead-free packaging in the solder paste product line. The company is also introducing a new lead-free triangular-shaped bar.

Since April, Kester's lead-free solder paste has been packaged in green jars and cartridges. The traditional solder paste will continue to be packaged in white jars and transparent gray cartridges. The company believes this will make it easier for customers to distinguish between lead and lead-free alloy pastes on their production lines and will also avoid costly confusion, making the transition to lead-free easier.

To further reduce confusion in the customer's production lines, Kester has introduced the industry's first easily distinguishable lead-free triangular solder bar. The company hopes the triangular shaped lead-free bar will keep customers from making costly mistakes in their solder pots.

The change in lead-free packaging will soon be seen globally, but currently the changes will be seen from shipments out of the Des Plaines facility only.

www.kester.com