Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - Features

LONDON, Dec. 16 -- The U.K. government has made available a series of publications on the WEEE and RoHS Directives, including best practice case studies.

The guidance is available for free at www.envirowise.gov.uk/electronics.

Among the suggestions:

Talk to, or join, a recycling industry consortium.
Talk to a recycler about the requirements and costs of recycling your own product, with a view to re-design.
Find out what happens at the end-of-life for your product.
Establish a dialogue with distributors and retailers to establish if your own take-back scheme is possible, or what the best options are for your business.
Look at current contracts, both for equipment used and sold, to identify any possible transferral of responsibility.
Evaluate customer opinions about who is responsible for WEEE and see if it is possible to negotiate
Evaluate B2B takeback obligations if selling equipment to businesses that are likely to have old stock which will need to be collected and recycled.
Re-evaluate your business model.
Identify any market opportunities, such as recycling, logistics.
Consider a move from a selling to a renting business model.
Evaluate design and re-design opportunities.

For additional information:

U.K.'s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), RoHS guidelines: http://www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/
KPMG report on WEEE: www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/kpmgreport.pdf
DTI commissioned assessment on WEEE strategies in other countries: www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/aeatreport.pdf
DTI RoHS compliance reports: ROHS Compliance Executive Summary.pdf: www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/; ROHS Compliance Full Report.pdf: www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/
Centre for Sustainable Design: www.cfsd.org.uk
Sustainable Design Network: www.sustainabledesignnet.org.uk
EC's Integrated Product Policy: www.europa.eu.int/comm/environment/ipp/home.htm
United Nations UNIDO training kit on Cleaner Production: www.unido.org/doc/9753
Lifecycle analysis tools: www.pre.nl
Waste Resource and Action Programme: www.wrap.org.uk
Intellect: www.intellectuk.org/campaigns/environment/default.asp
Unep sustainable consumption: www.uneptie.org/pc/sustain
Environment Agency life cycle analysis tool: www.environment-agency.gov.uk
Sustainable Business: www.sustainablebusiness.com
Design Council: www.design-council.org.uk

HOUSTON, Dec. 15, 2004 — Microtek Inc. (microtek.co.jp/english/) has chosen BP Microsystems' (bpmicro.com) equipment for a new programming services facility in Isehara, Kanagawa, Japan.

The 130-employee company plans and designs parts that are then commissioned for manufacture in separate facilities. It prefers automated programming systems because of reduced bent leads during handling and better ESD isolation. Additionally, it offers visual inspection services and component marking services.

Microtek's new facility, the Atsugi Programming Center, uses programmers, vision inspection machines and marking machines. The company anticipates programming over six million devices this year.

SAN JOSE, Dec. 14 -- Flextronics today promoted Thomas J. Smach to chief financial officer, succeeds Bob Dykes. Dykes, CFO since 1997, is leaving to become CFO and executive vice president, business operations, at Juniper Networks.

Dykes will continue to advise Flextronics through March.

"I cannot begin to tell you how important Bob has been to the development of Flextronics as a leading company in the EMS industry, both as a director and as CFO," said Michael Marks, chief executive. "Bob served as my most trusted advisor during the rapid development of the company over the past seven years."

Smach has been Flextronics senior vice president of finance since its acquisition of the Dii Group in April 2000.

SAN JOSE, Dec. 13 -- Hewlett-Packard's efforts to lower its costs could bode poorly for its EMS suppliers. That's according to a research note today from Deutsche Bank.

HP spends an estimated $43 billion each year --- the largest in the world -- on supply chain procurement. The company seeks ongoing supply chain cost reductions of the $1 billion to $1.3 billion annually through 2007, DB wrote, the bulk expected to come from lower procurement costs.

HP, which sources 88% of its' spend with its top 40 suppliers, has plans to shrink its supplier base even more. In doing so, the firm will retake control of various purchasing that the company had previously outsourced to EMS firms, DB wrote.

HP is demanding its EMS firms compete on their manufacturing capabilities, rather than procurement. "While HP implemented this process over a year ago to get better clarity into its costs (and eliminate the CMs' profit from material cost arbitrage), we believe HP is accelerating this move and continuing to pressure pricing at the EMS level," DB analyst Chris Whitmore wrote.

Furthermore, the company is pushing toward greater standardization across its hardware platform, reducing the number of parts it uses.

PARIS, Dec. 13 -- LG Electronics last week opened an R&D center here and will staff it with more than 100 researchers, part of its strategy to crack the top 3 of the handset industry market by 2006.

At the center, LG will work on multimedia features for its next-generation (4G) GSM and WCDMA phones. The company will also use the location to enhance its links with major European service providers like Vodafone, Hutchison, T-Mobile and Orange .

LG also has R&D centers in San Diego, Beijing, Bangalore and Moscow.

In a statement, James Kim, president for European Headquarters, said, "[T]he establishment of R&D center in Europe has created an environment in which we can efficiently respond to R&D issues in the region. We will position our research center as the R&D hub penetrating European mobile phone market by increasing the number of researchers by more than 100-plus people next year."

FOREST GROVE, OR, Dec. 10 -- Merix Corp. today announced the acquisition of San Jose quickturn PCB plant for $43 million, $41 million in cash. Other terms were not disclosed.

Merix will buy Data Circuit Systems Inc., a provider of quickturn board fabrication services, for a total purchase price of $43 million, consisting of $41 million in cash and a $2 million note. The move effectively triples Merix's customer base.

For its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Data Circuit Systems had net income of $2.3 million on sales of $27.7 million. The firm posted an EBITDA of $5.8 million.

In a press statement, Merix chairman and chief executive Mark Hollinger said, "Merix has been focused on growing and enhancing its quickturn business for some time. While we have made significant progress in this endeavor, this combination enhances our market opportunity by providing added scale, tripling our customer base, diversifying our end markets, adding experienced rep firms to complement our direct sales force, and augmenting our quickturn service offering to include 24 hour turnaround."