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52 The PCB Magazine • June 2014 jobs in Germany. And it was electronics that was driving innovation in automotive develop- ment, taking over from mechanical engineer- ing as the dominant force. Future automotive electronics would make major contributions to safety, autonomy and connectivity, and the value of automotive electronics was forecast to increase to 430 billion euros by 2025, largely as a consequence of major developments in alter- native drive systems. He commented that, of the present $60 bil- lion world market for PCBs, the top 100 PCB fabricators now supplied 80% of the total re- quirement. "The big ones are getting bigger and the smaller ones must become more fo- cused!" His message was that the PCB industry must consolidate further in order to secure the resources to support future capital and operat- ing expenditure requirements as the PCB pro- gressed from being a component carrier to be- coming an integrated part of a system solution as automotive electronics technology contin- ued a rapid evolution along a route analogous to that of the mobile phone. And as cars needed to manage more and more electrical power, the power-electronics PCB, offering lower cost than its ceramic equivalent, had enormous growth potential. PCB and semiconductor were growing to- gether. No longer was the PCB "the semiconduc- tor for poor people." Miniaturisation, the de- mand for maximum performance in minimum space, was being achieved by techniques such as module embedding, motherboard embed- ding, power embedding and ceramic replace- ment. "Nothing is as consistent as change!" The PCB had become an integrated part of custom- ised solutions. An interesting statistic: of over 25,000 PCB manufacturers in the world, 15 served the requirements of 75% of the automo- tive market, characterised by its special needs and long design cycles. Looking to the future, Dr. Schweizer pre- dicted that the electronics value chain would react to the need to integrate active and passive components into PCB-based systems by form- ing partnerships. "Let's take off our old shoes and look at new ways of management!" He considered the transition from management by control to managing partnerships to be vital to future success. "We must be adaptive to change and ready to question our management styles. Partnership models offer the most promising solutions." Electronic System Enhancements with Ad- vanced Packaging and Substrate Technologies was the title of the second keynote presentation, from Dr. Mike Ma, Vice President of Siliconware Precision Industries Limited, the world's larg- est IC packaging and testing company, based in Taiwan and part of a substantial and com- prehensive electronics industry infrastructure that included wafer foundries, IC packaging, EMS and ODM companies and PCB fabricators. Seven of the world's top-twenty PCB companies were Taiwanese, and there was strong growth in flexible PCB manufacture. "What is next after mobile computing?" he asked, referring to a growth curve progressing through zones labelled 'mobile computing,' 'context-aware computing' and 'ubiquitous computing' towards 'smart everything' and 'ambient intelligence,' and went on to explore and explain the contribution that packaging and PCB technology would make to the en- hancement of electronic systems. Small form factor was the driving force for the packaging industry. He used as an example the continuing evolution of the mobile phone, getting progressively thinner and, because a large proportion of available volume was tak- en up by the battery, the electronic systems had to be squeezed into progressively smaller spaces whilst constantly increasing function- ality demanded of them. Flexible circuits were becoming available with cores as thin as 14 microns, copper as thin as nine microns and lines and spaces down to 25 microns. System ECWC13: "CoNNECTINg THE WoRLD" THE KEyNoTE PRESENTATIoNS continues dr. stefan mengel