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100 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2021 Just about all electronic equipment uses printed circuit boards or flexible circuits for wiring and packaging materials. Electronic companies design their products and then place orders for PCBs. Supply chains order accordingly, and business trends begin to unfold from the PCB industry. This sounds simple enough, but countries and regions col- lect manufacturing data differently, so you have to understand statistical industry data before making forecasts. The Ministry of Economy and Industry (METI) in Japan provides monthly shipping data from manufacturers that include volume and revenue. This data is categorized into three buckets: rigid circuit boards, flexible circuits, and module substrates. The METI collects shipping data from Japanese manufacturers monthly, but these manufacturers outsource to other countries and this data does not include outsourced production. It is difficult to deter- mine the percent of business shifted to other countries, but most of us believe the number is about 60%. The U.S. standards organization IPC pro- vides a monthly book-and-bill ratio comparing shipping data within North America. The data compares revenue changes from the industry collected from manufacturers. This data is not absolute revenue, so the industry results can- not be compared to other regions. The Taiwan Printed Circuit Association (TPCA) provides monthly shipping revenue from publicly traded companies listed on the Taipei Stock Exchange. There are 40 companies categorized into two groups: rigid boards or PCB Industry Statistical Data EPTE Newsletter by Dominique K. Numakura, DKN Research LLC