Finding our next customer, one trinket at a time.

Green is sexy. One ignores the wave – in politics, marketing, journalism, social media, commerce – at one’s peril. In 2019, The Economist published an entire edition raising the alarm about climate change and its implications. Three years ago, Pope Francis wrote an encyclical letter (Laudato Si) about the environment, emphasizing care for our neglected “common home.” Self-righteous millennials and impressionable younger people march, advocating immediate, drastic control of greenhouse gases and other toxic emissions. A Swedish teenager cuts school and uses her sudden free time to excoriate industrialized nations and big corporations at the UN General Assembly for favoring economic growth over ecological sustainability and contaminating the world, shaming magistrates and captains of industry alike for their perceived callous indifference to the effects of rising temperatures. It is a good time to be a scold.

To be green is to hate waste. Waste is anathema. Angels recycle. Daily. So say those who are woke.

Additive processes are an effective tool toward the single-iteration design goal.

Why “dye and pry” is a fast, workable solution.

This month we show examples of testing BGAs with a “dye and pry,” a simple and cost-effective way of looking at joint failure or their condition after some form of mechanical testing or abnormal assembly practice.

FIGURE 1 shows a sample BGA joint after dye-and-pry testing. Eighty percent of the separated surface is covered by the red dye. This clearly shows separation occurred before the dye was added.

Disaster planning should be part and parcel of our business toolkit.

With only two months of the year behind us, it may be prudent to take any and all business plans you had and rip them up.

Entering a new year is always exciting, when embarking on interesting initiatives that will generate greater profits. Regrettably, sometimes disruptions sideline those exciting new thoughts, replaced by triage efforts that were never in your plans. This year that disruptive event is the coronavirus, and businesses are trying to work through a potentially altered global supply chain.

First and foremost, the coronavirus is just that: a virus – a highly contagious disease debilitating thousands around the world who have or will contract it. Our first thoughts must be with the victims who are infected, hoping they recover. And yes, other viruses and diseases over the years have wreaked havoc on various locations, countries and peoples. By itself, the coronavirus should not derail business planning, business plan execution, or business itself. However, sometimes “things” happen!