Purchasing and supply executives expect manufacturing growth will continue for the rest of 2021 with several metrics – capacity, capital expenditures and revenue – exceeding forecasts of late 2020. There is hope that the corner has been turned on the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Institute for Supply Management, and both the U.S. manufacturing and…
Your organization runs a tight ship, building profit by taking advantage of operational efficiencies borne from technological innovations. Thanks to IoT and RFID, you now track products from the point of origin to the point of consumption. So how can you leverage your company’s WAN to optimize your supply chain management? Deploying efficient global supply…
Electronics sales are predicted to rebound from a down 2020, with Statista estimating the global electronics industry will grow by around six percent in 2021, led by the Asian and American markets. Shopping, already moving heavily towards e-commerce, was fundamentally altered by the Covid-19 pandemic in ways that will likely endure and combined with increased…
Labor and supply constraints continue to limit U.S. manufacturing momentum even as demand remains robust. The nation’s leading factory index, the PMI, declined 4 percent in April, but depleted customer inventories and increasing factory backlogs bode well for the long-term health of the industry. “Recent record-long lead times, wide-scale shortages of critical basic materials, rising…
The electronics sector helped drive U.S. manufacturing activity to a 37-year high in March as pent-up demand emptied customers’ shelves and firmed up expectations for a widespread economic recovery. There are no signs demand will abate, according to the Institute for Supply Management, although factories will face supply and labor constraints at least through the…
Demand remains high for U.S.- made products even as manufacturers contend with price increases, labor shortages and supply constraints. The Institute for Supply Management’s PMI reached a three-year high in February to 60.8, an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the January reading. Signs for future demand remain strong, but supply chain pressures are unlikely…
A perfect storm of events have converged to create the semiconductor shortage of 2021. High-level collaboration across the electronics supply chain could make the deficit less painful, experts say. Shortages often prompt less-than-optimum purchasing behaviors. Competitive bidding for inventory drives prices up. Exceptions to approved vendor lists become common. And double-ordering – where purchase orders…
Power designers and purchasers of power connectors used in communications equipment can both benefit from modular connector systems. In many cases, these platforms offer a variety of configurations to provide more design flexibility for power designers, while lowering the cost of the bill materials (BOM) and eliminating the lead times associated with new tooling for…
The industry’s next white knight has taken many forms, though none has proven as resilient as PC-refresh cycles. Great expectations now rest with the Internet of Things (IoT), which the electronics industry hopes will build into a crescendo of “Things” that will provide demand for components, networking infrastructure, and so forth. This scenario, of course,…
Following four years of declining sales, the North American printed circuit board (PCB) market is expected to improve in 2015 and grow modestly through 2017, according to the IPC. The decline, which has been linked to slowing sales of rigid PCBs, has not been offset by increased demand for flexible PCBs, which has grown steadily…