The annual ECTC revealed exciting advancements on single- and multi-die packages.

The IEEE Electronics Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) at the end of May welcomed nearly 1,500 attendees to the sunshine state of Florida to discuss the latest developments in electronics packaging technology.

A panel discussion on the first evening focused on the topic Panel Fan-Out Manufacturing: Why, When and How? The panel was designed as a jury, with a customer (Qualcomm) surrounded by round wafer proponents (TSMC, Amkor’s Nanium) on one side and panel proponents (Deca Technologies, IZM Fraunhofer consortium) on the other. No conclusion was reached regarding the “right” path to meet customer requests for lower-cost packaging (in this case Qualcomm), but clearly panel processing could be an option. Exactly when panels would move into high-volume manufacturing remained a mystery, but in the audience representatives from Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) watched carefully for the reaction. SEMCO continues its development of a panel line, while Nepes and Powertech Technology (PTI) indicate lines are ready. Unimicron continues its research on panel processing and presented a paper discussing stress and warpage for its RDL-first panel FO-WLP.

In the OEM-EMS relationship, getting to win-win requires a clearly stated business case.

One of the recurring themes I hear in electronics manufacturing services (EMS) is how challenging it is for many program managers and salespeople to negotiate with customers. I’m often told the industry has changed, but when I ask hard questions I tend to find that the biggest change is that the people doing the negotiation seem to know a lot a less about the business of building electronic products than their predecessors. And this isn’t just on the EMS side. Years ago, OEMs put highly technical senior people on the team that managed outsourcing efforts. While those people were tough negotiators, they negotiated based on strong knowledge of the processes and challenges inherent in electronics manufacturing. Similarly, EMS program managers (PMs) were often pulled from operations. If expenses were increasing, they had the knowledge to explain the reason a price increase was necessary.

Quality programs should ensure quality, not hamstring ingenuity.

From time to time, new terms take hold that sound critically important, become heavily, if not overly, used in business conversation, and often are both misleading and oxymoronic. Such is the case with the now frequently used “single point of failure.”

I do not think it’s possible to go through a facility or quality audit by a large customer where they are not searching for – and certainly identifying – what, in their opinion, is an unacceptable single point of failure. In my experience, the single point the auditor or customer identifies is usually neither more nor less critical than any other aspect of the process, is usually not a single point, and is usually not more than a process – or processes – the person who cites it does not understand.

Over the past couple months, I took my now 14-year-old on his first electronics manufacturing factory tours. He had visited a vocational school with his 8th grade class, but I think it really opened his eyes to what real-life manufacturing looks like. He’s not considering vocational school, but I think it’s important that he – and all kids his age – understand what really goes on in (well-run) factories.

As background, “14” knows what a circuit board is, but has no knowledge of how they are made or assembled. At IMI PCB and Lightspeed Manufacturing, both located in Haverhill, MA, he was able to see the basic operations up close, and listened to explanations of how boards are transformed from digital 0s and 1s and schematics to large green (or other colored) panels and arrays, and then screened with solder paste and assembled, and (sometimes) reworked. Both plants are low-volume, high-mix operations, which altered his impression somewhat, for as a kid with multiple handhelds of his own, he naturally expected to see machines pumping out cellphone boards every three seconds.  

Before he entered, I asked what he was expecting to see inside. “Mainly machines,” he said, “because since the Industrial Revolution and the invention of mass production, we are in an age where machines are huge parts of our lives. I think the machines are doing the work, and people are just here to help run them.” He was in for some surprises.