Concentrate on Chicago, not the Crunch
15 September 2008
All eyes are back on America this week as the world’s economic power house once again sets the agenda.
The agenda, in electronics manufacturing terms, should be laid out at IPC’s MidWest show that kicks off next week. This issue of EMTWorldWide has been dedicated to this event in terms of describing the event and why, if you should be in the Chicago area next week, it would be worth visiting.
But before passing on a few thoughts about that, first of all a few thoughts about the waves of economic gloom coming from the USA this weekend. I am not sure if the troubles being experienced by two major banks, Lehman and Merrill Lynch, will prove to be no more than another uncomfortable bump on the slippery slope downwards, or if it represents a significant steepening of that slope. Either way, it is obviously bad news for everyone, not least of all for the poor souls who will inevitably end up losing jobs as a consequence – I sometimes think that it is easy for us in the manufacturing sector to forget that those involved in finance and service sectors have real jobs too!
But once again my rather simplistic nature comes to the fore and starts to conclude that the whole system of globalisation and capitalism has gone too far. Most importantly the engine room of the entire system lies within America – it is not America itself and certainly not the good people of that fine country, but it is the system, and the economy, which fuels global capitalism. When that system goes wrong (i.e. greedy banks over-lend to people who don’t have a hope of repaying the debt), the system goes into tailspin. The whole financial sector, which is basically a system of gambling with big bucks, finds that everything it backs is a loser. Backing for ‘real’ companies (manufacturers) becomes more fragile and... I won’t go on because it is not new territory and something I have touched on several times before (for example in When banks go wrong, written last summer when people, like me, who had never heard of sub-prime mortgages were learning that they were a bad thing!)
For those of us looking from the outside into the turmoil within the USA, the situation is more galling. Not only do we see all our own markets crippled with uncertainty, but we can look across the Atlantic (I write this from the UK) and see that the problem started a long way away from where we are and has nothing to do with us. Except, of course, it has everything to do with us. We have all bought into the same system and there are few countries more dependent on global finances than the UK. If you have retreated, as a country, from design and manufacture there is little to fall back on when the financial sector pulls the rug from under your feet.
In Europe, Germany has held on manfully to much of its electronics manufacturing base, while other leading economic nations (UK, France, Italy, Spain) have seen the volume manufacture go but retained significant expertise in product design, IP and low volume manufacturing. America has always lead the outsourcing model both to a third party and more recently to a different geography. Like Europe, it is not the leading manufacturing base it once was.
So, going back to the original topic of this piece, the IPC MidWest show in Chicago next week, why give so much attention to what is still a small exhibition?
You don’t have to be that old to remember Nepcon West in Anaheim, although some may struggle to remember it fondly. What it did do was provide a focal point for the North American industry that APEX, mainly as a result of the fracturing of the industry after the dot.com bubble burst, has been unable to do. Only Productronica has survived as a truly global production show. Instead, smaller regional events are now often the only way to reach engineers who are increasingly finding it difficult to justify a day or two out of their factories.
Personally, I think every region or country benefits from having its own exhibition, but if this struggles (as many have done recently) then it is in no ones interests to prolong the agony. Why MidWest deserves special treatment, in my opinion, is because of who organises it. The discussion (I hope it was not too much of a rant) above essentially revolves around having an industry running unchecked by any rules, which has its dangers. While the IPC, organisers of the MidWest show, don’t have any remit to alter the business practices of the electronics industry, they are playing an important role in shaping the technical standards that are becoming accepted on a global level. It is for this reason that the IPC’s key events, like APEX and MidWest, with their interactive approach, are currently the best events for engineers who both want to learn and are willing to make their own contribution to the industry as a whole. Who better to set the rules than the people who have to work with them?
So rather than worry about what the Credit Crunch is doing to our industry, why not take a trip to Chicago and get involved with its future?
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