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22 SMT Magazine • December 2014 In "The Terminator" movie series, an arti- ficial intelligence network known as Skynet wipes out most of mankind. It nearly succeeds in wiping out all mankind, but from the ashes emerges the Resistance. The Resistance is made up of survivors who, despite their weakened condition, have the will to survive and fight for existence. This more or less describes the PCB fabri- cation industry over the past 15 years, except instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Skynet, we are trying to survive in the face of relentless competition from China and other emerging markets. On our side, instead of someone cool like John Connor, our industry is unfortunately dominated by folks nearing or in their 60s, but at least they have the fight in them of Arthur Spooner, Jerry Stiller's character on "King of by Yash Sutariya AlpHA CirCuiT CorporATion, SATurn ElECTroniCS CorporATion Outlook for 2015 and Beyond: A Supply Chain Perspective Queens." When you think about it, though, China isn't Skynet. Rather, what caused this drastic change was actually the free market sys- tem. In a free market, the prices for goods and services are set freely between sellers and con- sumers based on levels of supply and demand. FEATurE Figure 1: The Terminator.