Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1533904
68 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2025 increased involvement of Japan and SE Asia in IPC standards work, etc. Sydney Xiao, IPC president of North Asia, highlights this trend in her Real Time with… interview. irty years ago, the PCB portion of the electronics industry was a thriving network of businesses: Many family-owned or simi- larly small serving a local/regional customer base. is was when the OEMs took a much more active role in moving their designs into fabrication and manufacture. A key part of that highly resilient supply chain was that OEMs of a certain size would build their own fab and EMS facilities, keeping manu- facturing in-house and customized to their products. But on a global scale, we threw up obstacles and diverted most of the business to one central region. I liken it to an analogy of removing dams from our riverways in the western United States. Built originally for various well-inten- tioned but obsolete purposes, these dams persist in disrupting an ecosystem while no longer providing any benefit in return. It is a biologist's dream to study how a river ecosys- tem rebounds once the dam is demolished. While it's no surprise that the original ecosys- tem returns, what is surprising is the rapidity and the robustness with which the regional diversity recovers. Rivers for which the dam had wiped the native salmon population for a hundred years, now have salmon returning to spawn as little as three years later 1 . Like the rivers, our regional diversity is returning. As Chris Mitchell, IPC vice president of global government relations, said in his Real Time with… interview with I-Connect007, the world wholeheartedly embraced free trade aer the fall of the Ber- lin Wall. It can be argued that we overdid it, resulting in optimizing the resilience out of our supply chains, diverting too much eco- nomic flow away from its natural course, as it were. Chris suggests that the pendulum is swinging back to encourage more regional competitiveness. Alison James, IPC senior director for Europe, has been speaking with us about IPC Europe's work with the Euro- pean Union's Competitiveness Compass.2 Aer hearing their remarks, I could see the parallels to the dam removal projects: To re- establish a thriving ecosystem, we need to clear out the barriers, obstacles, and diver- sions, while also paying attention to sustain- ability. It was my take-away that the EU Com- pass work seems intent to remove key strate- gic economic dams so that European manu- facturing can once again flow. ere is no doubt this is an exciting time to be in electronics manufacturing. Virtu- ally ever y aspect of our industr y is moving solidly (finally) into the 21st centur y. It's about time . SMT007 References 1. I asked Grok to fact-check this claim, only to find out that river biologists reported migratory fish returning in weeks or months if the conditions were right. 2. 'IPC's Call to Action for the EU Competitiveness Compass', SMT007.com, March 2025 Nolan Johnson is managing editor of SMT007 Magazine. (L-R) Dr. Diana Radovan and Alison James