CRANSTON, RI – Veteran inventor Karl Seelig has been named chairman of the IPC Solder Products Value Council.
 
Seelig, vice president of technology at AIM, has authored numerous technical papers on topics such as lead-free electronics assembly, no-clean flux, assembly and process optimization, inspection, and metallurgy. He holds several patents in soldering technology, including four for lead-free solder alloys.
 
He supersedes Roger Savage, president of Kester, who completed a two-year term.
 
The SPVC is a management council formed under the auspices of the IPC whose aim is to provide leadership for the global solder manufacturing industry.
 
AIM is a global manufacturer of assembly materials. 
 

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Sanmina-SCI's local PCB assembly plant suffered a transformer fire Oct. 31, according to local news reports.

The fire originated in the facility's power plant on the evening of Oct. 31, the Huntsville Times reported .

The paper said witnesses and firefighters attributed the fire to the transformers, but the cause remains under investigation.

The extent of any damage is unclear at this time.

On an unrelated note, Sanmina-SCI was recently involved in a pair of real estate transactions in the area. Brazelton Properties bought a 130,000-sq. ft. campus in Lacey's Spring, AL, for $1.2 million, and local investors purchased a 194,540-sq. ft. office and warehouse building in Huntsville for $2.9 million. 

CHENNAI, INDIA -- The head of Flextronics' India operations has reportedly left the company.

A. Gururaj, director and general manager of Flextronics Technologies as well as overseer of the EMS company's manufacturing facility here, reportedly resigned more than a month ago, said The Business Standard, citing industry sources.

Gururaj declined comment to The Business Standard. “I am not talking to the media about it,” he reportedly told the news outlet.

There have been reports over operational issues at the plant.

GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN -- Prevas AB has agreed to acquire the embedded solutions consulting unit of Flextronics for SEK5.6 million ($875,000) in cash.

The deal includes the business, development laboratory, and 50 employees. The unit is forecast to reach SEK50 million ($7.8 million) in revenues in 2008.

Prevas is a publicly traded Swedish IT firm with 500 employees in Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

SEK1:US$0.1562.

TEMPE, AZ – The slowdown in housing and other markets is starting to back up on manufacturing, according to a report released today by the Institute for Supply Management.

Read more ...

EL SEGUNDO, CA — Global shipments of mobile handsets equipped with GPS capability are expected to more than quadruple from 2006 to 2011 due to the U.S. government’s mandate for Emergency 911 capability as well as wireless operators’ initiatives to offer location-based services (LBSs), according to iSuppli Corp.

GPS-equipped mobile handset shipments will increase to 444 million units by 2011, rising from 109.6 million units in 2006. By 2011, 29.6% of all mobile phones shipped will have GPS capability, up from 11.1% in 2006.

“Besides cameras, multimedia capabilities and connectivity solutions, mobile-handset OEMs increasingly are investigating the integration of GPS functionality in mobile devices as a value-added product differentiator,” said Tina Teng, analyst, wireless communications at iSuppli. “Wireless carriers are looking at introducing various new GPS-based, revenue-generating services to increase average revenue per user.”

Such LBSs are the key services that could drive up ARPUs. LBSs include a broad range of value-added services that incorporate user location pinpointed by satellites or other tools with location databases. The most common services are user location, turn-by-turn navigation, location search, tracking, information services and social networking.

E911 mandates also are driving the expansion of the GPS-enabled handset market in the U.S. The U.S. FCC in 1996 issued a report that requires all operators to precisely locate the position of wireless callers making emergency 911 calls. The regulation was implemented in three phases: Phases 0, I and II. Phase II of the E911 implementation requires all operators to deliver specific latitude and longitude information of the caller, also known as Automatic Location Identification (ALI). This can be accomplished using a GPS-enabled mobile handset.

The U.S. and South Korea are expected to be the leading regions for GPS-enabled mobile handsets. Europe will be the next largest GPS-enabled handset market as GPS functionality penetrates into smart phones.

ST. LOUIS -- EMS provider LaBarge Inc. reported fiscal first-quarter net earnings rose 5% sequentially on a 19% jump in net sales.

For the period ended Sept. 30, net profits were $2.5 million on sales of $59.2 million.

Gross margin was 19.2%, up from 18% in the fourth quarter but down from 21.4% last year.

Net cash from operations was $5.1 million, up from $1.04 million in the fourth quarter and down from $10.4 million a year ago.

Bookings were extremely strong, exceeding $100 million, a record for the company, on demand from the defense, natural resources and industrial sectors. Backlogs at Sept. 30 were $245.5 million, also a record and up 19% from July 1 and 16% from last year.

Chief executive and president Craig LaBarge said, “LaBarge’s long-term business outlook remains very positive based on the strength of our current backlog and a healthy pipeline of new business opportunities. We expect second-quarter sales and earnings will compare favorably to this year’s first-quarter results. Further, we expect our improving mix of business to drive further gross margin improvement in the second half of the fiscal year. We expect fiscal 2008 to be another record year.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Electronics manufacturing services firm Nortech Systems reported net sales of $29.6 million for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, up 17 % over the same period in 2006.

Operating income was $1 million, up 58%, and net income was $420,506, up 38%.