In the highly competitive, fast-moving semiconductor manufacturing industry, strategic procurement is essential. When sourcing new and used chip equipment and parts, multiple factors must be considered, including reliability, ability to meet shipping dates, volume and price. The “best” supplier could be a major well-known name or a new provider that you haven’t purchased from yet.…
Significant change is coming to the manufacturing arena. As artificial intelligence, the industrial IoT and the smart factory begin to transform production, Intel Corp. is gauging the impact such technologies will have on manufacturing and the supply chain — and the humans that oversee these complex operations. The benefits of smart factories are many: autonomous…
Global chip sales in November increased by 7.4 percent year-over-year to reach $31 billion—the largest gain since January of 2015. Semiconductor sales also grew by 2 percent over October’s level of $30.4 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Although December data has not yet been released there are indications that 2016 may be…
Finding an electronics industry executive at Electronica 2016 who isn’t gung ho about the prospects for the sector in 2017 and over the next several years won’t be impossible but it’s certainly not going to be easy. On the second day of the biennial exhibition that brings together designers, suppliers and manufacturers to the high-tech…
Tom Sharpe clearly recalls the first batch of “clone” semiconductors that turned up under the microscopes at his company’s Sandy Hook, Conn., test facility three years ago. SMT Corp., where he is vice president, specializes in detecting counterfeit chips, and most of those it had detected before then had been poor-quality, previously used chips that…