A perspective on North American PWB technology hurdles and barriers and a strategy to overcome obstacles

Increasingly sophisticated users are demanding light, highly portable systems that offer more functions but still keep the costs low. As a result, electronic manufacturing can no longer be partitioned into discreet market segments such as semiconductors, passive components, and PWB's, which are designed and built independently and assembled into a system by yet another party. The new systems are requiring more functions per unit area, which drives more complexity into the interconnecting structure or PWB. The PWB itself is becoming an active part of the electronic circuit, as well as the structural support and package of the system. PWB design and manufacturing capability ultimately determines what and how electronic components can be used and the resulting system size and weight. Reliable portable systems are required in every industry. New markets for PWB's are opening with the rapidly expanding use of organic substrates in semiconductor device packaging components such as ball grid arrays (BGA) and chip scale packages (CSP's). The underlying theme of this paper is that the North American Electronics Interconnection industry needs to change if it is to remain competitive. Implementing the recommendations in this paper will neither stop the OEM from becoming a nonmanufacturing entity, nor stop the EMSI (Electronic Manufacturing Service Industry) from continuing to grow and become more like OEM's. Implementing these recommendations will assist the well managed PWB manufacturer in becoming more competitive.