PCB Chat

Dr. Christopher Tang is a UCLA Distinguished Professor and the holder of the Edward W. Carter Chair in Business Administration and editor of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, the leading journal for the operations management research community.

He offers his view on how the electronics supply chain might respond to the Covid-19 disruption -- and how it might not -- with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

With so many people out of work, Reliability Matters speaks with friend and colleague Dr. Mike Stull about entrepreneurship. Dr. Stull is a professor at California State University San Bernardino. He is the director of the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship (IECE) at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). He also serves as Chair for the Department of Management in the Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration and academic director for entrepreneurship. 

Keith Bryant discusses the advantages of x-ray technology, its practical uses, and common mistakes made when using x-ray technology. A fully qualified engineer, Keith has over 30 years’ experience in electronics manufacturing.  He is well known and respected for presenting technical papers at many high-profile events around the world and for his many published articles and interviews. 

He started his career in this industry with bare printed circuit boards in the early days of high-count multilayer technology, moving through to running contract manufacturing operations. He had 10 years’ experience with advanced materials and soldering systems before working with high technology x-ray and AOI systems, again for 10 years. 

Then for almost three years Keith worked as a technology and business consultant, assisting many of the major industry names. From 2017 to 2019 he was global sales director of a leading x-ray manufacturer. Last year reverting to a technology and business consultancy role allowing him to pursue other interesting projects, including i4.0 and working with an advanced x-ray tube manufacturer.

Keith was chairman of the SMART Group for 11 years and is now chairman of SMTA Europe, and in 2018 he was presented with the SMTA International Leadership award.

Fireboard Labs is the creator of a cloud-based smart thermometer for kitchens and the grill. A startup -- Fireboard was founded in 2015 -- the company quickly made the decision to build its circuit boards in-house. Ted Conrad, the founder of Fireboard Labs, discusses that decision and lessons learned, plus a breakdown of their signature products, with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

Teresa Huber is president and CEO of Intervala, an EMS company based in Pittsburgh. She has a bachelor’s in electrical engineering technology from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MBA in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon. Prior to helping launch Intervala, she was chief executive for TMG Electronics, vice president of operations for the commercial electronics division of LaBarge/Ducommun, chief operating officer of Pinnacle Electronics, and spent 10 years with Sony Electronics in engineering, manufacturing and supply chain, including vice president of operations for Sony’s Pittsburgh Television Group.

She explains Intervala's strategy and reasons for acquiring Princeton Technology Corp., its expanding target end-markets, and the M&A environment for EMS companies today.

Do you purchase boards overseas or domestically? What questions should you ask your board vendor? PCD&F/CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY columnist Greg Papandrew answers these and other board-buying questions. Papandrew is cofounder of Better Board Buying and the author of PCB Basics for Buyers. 

Luminovo is a Munich-based startup working on applying machine learning to electronics development and production processes. Cofounders Sebastian Schaal and Timon Ruban have worked with major automotive companies like Audi, Volkswagen and Daimler on shop floor parts kitting, quality control and inventory tracking, and with Infineon on machine learning for semiconductor manufacturing. They are now focusing on accelerating electronics manufacturing from printed circuit board design through assembly. 

Dave Trail, vice president of sales for the SMT & Electronics Business Unit of Critical Manufacturing, has over 25 years of experience in electronics manufacturing equipment, processes, and manufacturing executions systems software. Throughout his career, he has been a pioneer and proponent of the evolution of manufacturing from Industry 3.0 to Industry 4.0, Big Data Analytics, and the Industrial Internet of Things, and he has helped to bring those tools to some of the world’s largest multinationals. Dave talks about the use of MES and augmented reality (AR) in electronics assembly with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

During this interview, Mike Konrad and guests Mark Hughes and Greg Ziraldo of Advanced Assembly discuss two papers: