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A year of transition

Allgemein
A year of transition

A year of transition
The electronics manufacturing industry as well as Europe’s inhabitants can expect a year of transitions in a number of different areas. Foremost, look at the change of the process paradigm – from lead-containing materials to lead-free solutions. With the beginning of the next year – for most of the European board assemblers – this move to new shores must in principle be completed in order to be able to gain experience in process technology as well as to assure quality and reliability of the products. Otherwise, if this goal isn’t reached, the new shores will not turn out to be a tera firma, because by mid-2006 the EU legislation will take into effect. By then the pre lead-free introductory carnival of seminars, tutorials, trainings, company presentations, etc. will be over. Especially small and middle-sized manufacturers are in need of support for ROHS and WEE.

At that point we will obviously encounter an upturn, as electronics business is picking up. Nice to hear, but for whom? Who are the winners from the last recession? I don’t see many of them. Too varied are the positions in markets, the design of new products, vision and insight of managements, the cut-backs during the downturn, etc., etc. Not many will really return to the former strength of glorious 1999/2000. During recession it was barely possible to spend a fortune for R&D to be prepared for the next cycle upwards.
And then we have this other European tragedy to cope with: the “old” fifteen EU countries have to integrate ten “newcomers”, but the old EU (quarreling in numerous squabbles, and other troubles of all kinds) has to economically support these newcomers. In terms of the gross national product, income per capita and number of people, they are in the back seat in this union. Even before the big entry (May this year), the fight started long ago about the distribution of EU money, the EU Constitution, the role of certain countries, of positions and functions in the EU, and so on. We will have “large and proud” nations, but when it comes to subsidy questions (the number-one issue) all proud and moral values will seem to have been forgotten, and the ugly face of self-righteousness and greed will appear. Everyone wants to have something special. The dazzling and vibrant idea of a peaceful and prosperous, more or less united Europe has been perverted by lobbyism and intriguing.
This childish play will go on for years to come. Almost no one wants to donate for Europe, but everyone wants to soak up the maximum. This cannot work, according to simple common sense. And all of us in Europe have to pay for this circus of confusion and the mess brought about by representatives and bureaucrats.
Hopefully, the people working on the changeover to lead-free, and the others striving to bring up their companies to a new freshness and standing, are acting with more insight than the muddle-heads in Brussels and elsewhere.
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Titelbild EPP EUROPE Electronics Production and Test 11
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11.2023
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