It’s now ten years since we fretted over how the advent of the new millennium and spectre of the dreaded Y2K bugs would impact the world’s computer systems. Would it bring the global economy to a standstill? In the event the computers continued to function and the potential disaster scenarios never played out. Instead, a decade later, we have had to cope with a real and much more serious economic problem caused by the banks, those stuffy, ‘safe as houses’ institutions.

Electronic components markets have always been cyclical, driven primarily by the huge investment required to remain competitive in the next generation of semiconductor process technologies. The details may vary, affected by different economic conditions, drivers, organisations, individuals and consequences, but overall the basic cycles of our industry are frighteningly consistent. Dr Tsugio Makimoto of Sony Corp. devised a model in 1987 to explain this. Known as Makimoto's Wave, his model defines the seven year cycle during which electronic products migrate from standard parts to custom devices, before the process reverses.

Contamination has always been a bugbear for the electronics production industry.  Dust and debris entering the production process leads to lower yields, more rework and downtime not to mention wasted materials.

However advances in production techniques have made the issue even more critical when “right first time, every time” has become the industry’s mantra as the pressure to increase profit margins and improve efficiency has become intense. The drive to squeeze more performance into smaller boards has meant that track and gap widths have become much tighter and the number of layers has increased. Therefore very small particles (down to one micron) can have a much greater impact than before by, for example blocking holes in the PCB. 

With systems becoming more intricate and increasingly dependant upon a processor core running embedded firmware rather than the more traditional hardware approach, the challenges to the engineer of design and integration have become significantly more complex over the past few decades.  It is now more necessary than ever for design engineers to be multi-skilled in terms of their areas of expertise in order to achieve a functional system, setting aside the constant requirement for fast time to market with new products.

The aerospace and defence industries have often been criticised for the impact they have on the environment, and when current economic pressures are added to this, it is little surprise that many organisations are looking to streamline their manufacturing processes and reduce off-shore sourcing in response to these pressures.

Pressure has been increasing on aerospace and defence from environmentalists and consumers in response to the 2005 Stern review, which confirmed the need to reduce carbon emissions to arrest climate change. Key findings from the report suggest that, by 2050, aviation emissions would account for 2.5% of global emissions, and others predict it could even be as high as 5%.

This time last year the mainstream news media had been full of sensational stories about the credit crunch and economic downturn because what had started in the financial world had spread to construction, automotive and then to retail and services. Many of us in the UK Electronic Component Supply industry were somewhat bemused with the early breaking news coverage because unlike some of these other sectors our industry had been having a tough time since 2002 (let's face it the good years were when the market grew by a meagre few percent) - our industry hadn't had much help from the market, our growth had to be achieved by new products, new initiatives and old fashioned hard work.

The hype in the UK media over the last few weeks suggests that the current recession will be over before we realise it and that economic growth has or will soon return. The Office for National Statistics confirmed that output from the UK manufacturing segment in May and June increased by 0.4%, whilst the Purchasing Managers' Index currently stands at 47, its highest level since May '08. The UK Business Confidence Monitor published by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales recorded its largest recorded quarterly gain and predicts third quarter 2009 GDP growth of 0.5%.

Companies make money by delivering value to consumers. Sometimes this value comes in the form of a commodity delivered more efficiently. More often in technology companies, it comes in the form of differentiated solutions that are not available from other suppliers. In every case, value is defined solely in the mind of the consumer: does the product make them feel good, or solve a real problem; does it work consistently well? These are the things of which customer satisfaction is made.

How much effort do novelists put into researching? I pondered that question at the recent Embedded Masterclass conference in Cambridge. I was listening to the first presentation when one of the organisers interrupted and said that they'd lost a delegate and asked if Stephen King was in the room. I glanced round looking in vain for the master horror writer and when he didn't appear I found myself distracted by wondering what he would be doing there anyway.

I really like the idea of saying ‘I don't believe in a recession therefore I'm not taking part!' If only it were that simple! Tell that to a supplier in the automotive industry, or someone in non government funded construction and you would likely be finishing your lunch through a straw.

The recession is here and we are all impacted to a greater or lesser extent. At a recent EMSA meeting it was tabled that the UK EMS sector is down about 15% from this time last year, and certainly anecdotal evidence suggests this is about right.

Going back 20 years you'd find nearly every large equipment manufacturer having a sizeable purchasing department. Ten to twenty buyers were common, each specialising in a specific product type - you'd have your active component buyer; your passive component buyer; your interconnect buyer; and so on. Each buyer would have typically served a recognised apprenticeship of some sort and have product knowledge of what he was buying, in some cases better than the engineer who might be specifying it! 

Trade shows, you either love them or hate them, and then what do you do with that pile of business cards that you brought back? Some time ago, I bought one of those little business card scanners but it takes so long and is so fiddly correcting the scanning mistakes that I hardly ever find the energy to scan the cards. As a result, the unscanned piles are slowly taking over the right-hand side of my desk, resulting in my work moving slowly left after each show. I am sure one of those scientists who work out how much the coastline is disappearing each year could do an analysis of my desk and work out on which day in the future there will no longer be enough room for me to work.

Last summer, I travelled across the Atlantic to Montreal in Canada. Though we spent a full two weeks of holiday there, the reason for the choice was that the middle weekend saw the city host this year's annual World Science Fiction Convention, known colloquially as Worldcon. This was my fifth Worldcon (two of the previous four being in the UK) and my first visit to Canada.