Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - Features

HERNDON, VA —The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI.org) will host an Innovation Leadership Forum intended to stimulate innovation and manufacturing research for the electronics industry.

Held in Herndon on Sept. 15-16, the objective is help focus limited R&D resources to ensure development of the innovative technologies required to maintain the growth of the electronics industry over the next decade.

“The rapid globalization of high-tech innovation and manufacturing has caused several notable industry leaders to express serious concerns about the future competitiveness of our industrial infrastructure,” said Bob Pfahl, vice president of iNEMI.

ATLANTA - Visiprise Inc. closed on a $16 million round of funding led by Investor Growth Capital (IGC). This oversubscribed, second round of funding also included RRE Ventures, Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, Canaan Ventures and Wheatley Partners, bringing total company funding to $18.3 million. IGC’s Noah Walley and Phil Dur will join Visiprise’s board of directors.

“This round of funding will enable Visiprise to quickly capitalize on our development and delivery of a true global manufacturing platform that offers companies as much as a tenfold return on their manufacturing IT investments,” said Sean McCloskey, president and CEO. “We see our ability to attract blue-chip investors in this round of funding as a strong endorsement of the company we have built over the past few years.”

In a statement, McCloskey said the new funding will be used to fuel expansion in Asia. It will also increase its investment in collaborative work to accelerate its partnership with SAP AG (the two companies offer a turnkey business software solution based upon SAP NetWeaver to the discrete manufacturing markets). In addition, McCloskey said the funding would be used to make future acquisitions.

“Visiprise has grown its enterprise accounts by 500% and completed 31 new deployments – six of which were multi-site, global installations,” said Noah Walley, managing director of IGC. “Today Visiprise has a list of clients that reads like a who’s who in discrete manufacturing and its product and product vision is one that we feel will be as important to manufacturers in the next three years as ERP was in the late ‘90s.”

New York -- Dr. Jennie Hwang will share her 15-year lead-free development knowledge and real-world production know-how in a series of lead-free courses in the New York area next week.

Attendees to each half-day course will receive a workbook and Dr. Hwang’s three current textbooks, including: Environment-Friendly Electronics and Implementing Lead-free Electronics.

Register for any or all courses at: blackfox.com/leadfree/LeadfreeRegistration.pdf.

August 8, AM: Part 1 & 2, Lead-Free Preparation for Implementation
August 8, PM: Part 3, Lead-Free Implementation & Production
August 9, AM: Part 4, Lead-Free Reliability & Manufacturing
August 9, PM: Part 5, Lead-Free System Compatibility--Materials and Processes
August 10, AM: Part 6, Lead-Free & the Role of Bi

For more info and individual course details, visit:
blackfox.com/leadfree/LeadFreeWorkshop.pdf

Dr. Hwang holds a number of patents and is the author of over 250 publications. She has served as National president of the SMTA and on the board of ASM International. Dr. Hwang is a member of the U.S. Commerce Department Export Council and the newly formed National Research Council Globalization Committee. She is currently a partner of H-Technologies Group Inc. and an adjunct professor at the Engineering School of Case Western Reserve University.

YAVNE, Israel - Valor Computerized Systems showed continued growth for the ninth quarter in a row, and released financial results for the six-month period ending June 30.

Revenues were $9 million in the second quarter of 2005, an increase of more than 20% over Q2 2004 revenues of $7.45 million. Revenues increased year-on-year, growing from $14.6 million in the first half of 2004 to $17.7 million in the first half of 2005.

Net profit in the second quarter was $408,000, an increase of 133% over the adjusted profit for the same quarter last year. Net profit for the first half of the year was more than $1 million – up 200% from the same period last year.