BOSTON – Electronics New England is not an oxymoron.

 

That much was made clear this week as easily more than 1,000 attendees visited the two-day trade show here at the vast Boston Convention Center. Despite several high-profile plant closings so far this year – Plexus in Ayer, MA, and Jabil in Billerica, MA among them – many of the smaller EMS shops remain on par with last year, even if the outlook is as cloudy as ever.

 

More than a dozen EMS companies exhibited at Electronics New England (the former Nepcon East) and the co-located BioMed show. The event, once the second-largest electronics manufacturing show in the country, is now squarely aimed at the medical market. Still, with medical perhaps the second hottest end-market behind military, many attendees and exhibitors turned out, hoping to get a piece of the action.

 

The EMS companies exhibiting ranged from very small (the pint-sized MFG Electronics) to Tier 2 firms like Hitachi OMD, which has annual EMS sales of $500 million.

 

Many, like Altron of Minneapolis (not to be confused with the former Altron of Wilmington, MA, which was acquired by Sanmina years ago), said the medical market remains buoyant. And Carlton Industries Corp., which has five SMT lines, said military contracts have kept business moving. Watertown, SD-based OEM Worldwide, a subsidiary of the massive Everett Smith Group, claimed that while new programs have been hard to find, the firm has been successful winning share from competitors thus far this year.

 

Not benefiting yet has been RMF Design and Manufacturing, a three-SMT line EMS company based in Mississauga, Canada, which said sales were down notably from last year.

 

The EMS companies present were divided on whether lead-free product was influencing medical designs. A representative from Altron, which has six SMT lines, said he “can’t remember any medical OEM talking lead-free.” Others asserted product builds are underway, however.

 

What was notable was how many EMS firms are offering in-house design services, even to medical and military OEMs and prime contractors. Also, many companies said customers are tightening their qualification audits, including as one EMS firm put it, “more intense auditing of financials.”

 

Over the past five years, Nepcon East drew mostly out-of-region equipment vendors, while many of the local suppliers like Speedline Technologies and EKRA opted to walk the floor but not exhibit. This year, suppliers were even scarcer, with only a few equipment companies on hand. Milara had the largest presence, showing both printers and placement machines. I&J Fisnar, label provider Nortec, and stencil provider MicroScreen were among the few other equipment suppliers. Heraeus was the only major solder vendor present, although some suppliers were represented. Cleaning materials suppliers Kyzen and Zestron were on hand.

 

At the Valor America booth, president Dan Weitzman explained the company is nearing a rollout of a lower-cost suite of its DfM and reporting software tools. The scaled down versions are built on the same platform as is its vPlan production planning, vManage shop floor management and vCheck QMS tools.

 

On the bare board fabrication equipment side, we saw only Chemcut. A handful of bare board suppliers were there, however, including Bare Board Group, Prototron Circuits, All Flex, and others.

 

 

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