The shift away from vertical integration has pushed the topic of supply chain management to the forefront of strategic planning for many manufacturers. Having a supply chain that provides a competitive advantage will be the differentiator in today's business environment. What is a supply chain? Defining terms is always a good point to start, and [...]
Holders Technology plc has announced its unaudited half yearly results for the 6 month period ended 31 May 2015. Holders Technology plc supplies specialty laminates and materials for printed circuit board manufacturers (PCB), and operates as an LED solutions provider to the lighting and industrial markets. The first half of the year saw a strengthening [...]
American Standard Circuits has announced that their company’s Quality Manager Mohammed Khan has completed IPC’s 6012 Application Specialist Training. Commenting on this accomplishment, American Standard Circuits CEO Mr. Anaya Vardya said, “This is not only a great achievement for Mohammed but for the entire company as well. We feel that the time he spent during [...]
Designing a supply chain for the provision of laminates and pre-pregs to the PCB fabricator shouldn’t be that complicated, should it? The laminate is simply manufactured and then shipped...what could possibly go wrong? It turns out it is more complicated, partly because the supply chain is not fully owned by one supplier, and hence cannot [...]
The biggest problem with designing rigid-flex hybrid PCBs is making sure everything will fold in the right way, while maintaining good flex-circuit stability and lifespan. The next big problem to solve is the conveyance of the design to a fabricator who will clearly understand the design intent and therefore produce exactly what the designer/engineer intended. [...]
RF shields minimize radio frequency (RF) noise to prevent it from affecting the sensitive and critical electronic components beneath the shield. They also prevent such noise from interfering with neighboring devices or other systems in the vicinity. RF shields typically have a unique design and conform to the layout of the PCB. Often, the shields [...]
Nano copper-based electronic ink and associated processing have been developed to create ultra-thin copper on flexible PCB substrates. Using a unique nanomanufacturing process, nanomaterial is created, dispersed, and sintered, resulting in copper foil of one micron or less. The process is rapid and sufficiently low-temperature to allow deposition onto temperature-sensitive substrates such as polyimide, plastic [...]
As part of a recent I-Connect007 supply chain survey, we found that RF laminate material can be very difficult to obtain. Rogers Corporation was named specifically in our survey as one supplier with a limited amount of material available. In fact, their delivery time was reported as being as high as 55 days for some [...]
PCB growth has slowed in recent years, though last year the growth rate was slightly higher than the 2% of the last three years. Estimates by IEK of Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan show that the PCB industry will continue to grow in 2015 at a rate of 3-5% with an annual output of [...]
For this issue of SMT Magazine, the i-connect007 team opted for a different approach when it came to planning the editorial content of the magazine. Our topic is the supply chain segment of the electronics assembly industry, and it is the singular topic this month for all our titles—SMT Magazine, The PCB Magazine, and [...]