Surface Mount Technology Market Forecasting

Most education tracts in Industrial Technology prepare students with traditional content relevant to industry. Learning these skills is critical to a student’s ability to function in any industrial field and these skills have always dominated industrial education. Within recent years, however, new computer technology is rapidly changing the face of industry. This comes in many forms, one of which will be analyzed in this paper and applied to the manufacturing process in the surface mount technology market (SMT). Reliable market forecasting is essential for success in any industry. This paper presents one method of accomplishing this using artificial neural networks (ANNs) to create a forecast of the U.S. surface mount technology market. A discussion of the background and importance of SMT in the printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing process is included, followed by a brief description of the ANN software used to produce the trends and forecasts presented in this paper. Input data are discussed along with the methodology used to generate the market predictions with appropriate schematics to illustrate the applicability and accuracy of the findings. Introduction As the electronics industry strives for faster, lighter and cheaper components, PCB assemblers and equipment manufacturers are required to employ the latest technological advances in order to keep up with a changing market (Frost and Sullivan, 1998). The biggest challenge that the industry faces is to meet customer demand for new device types as quickly as possible. To accomplish this effectively, PCB manufacturers have been undergoing a changeover from using through-hole technology to SMT (Association of Connecting Electronics Industries, 1998). SMT enables companies to gain the most economic advantage by improving time-to-market efficiency (Reed, 1999). Making the change from through-hole manufacturing to SMT processes is an expensive venture, requiring heavy investments. In order to justify the costly conversion to SMT, manufacturers must understand the trends and directions in the PCB and SMT market. This is especially true when considering that the PCB industry is primarily composed of small to medium-size companies that do not have large amounts of investment capital (Mussehl-Aziz, 1998). Surface Mount Technology The U.S. electronics industry has experienced rapid changes, particularly in the size reductions resulting from the progression from vacuum tubes to transistors and then from transistors to different types of integrated circuits (IC’s). PCBs serve as the backbone of electronics; as the active elements of electronics shrink, the packaging methods change to incorporate them. Important PCB size reductions occurred when wire interconnections were replaced by components soldered in plated through-holes and again when SMT was introduced. SMT has become the industry norm for electronic assemblies and continues to grow in use with an ever-expanding electronics market. According to a report, World SMT Manufacturing Equipment (Frost and Sullivan, 1997), revenues in the worldwide SMT market are expected to grow from almost $3.3 billion in 1997 to over $8.8 billion in 2004. In fact, by most reports, SMT growth rates are very positive for the near future. Surface mounting is a newer, space-saving alternative for packaging electronic components. Unlike through-hole mounting, connecting holes in the PCB are unnecessary for SMT. Pins of surface-mounted packages are soldered directly to conductors on one side of the board, leaving the other side free for additional circuits. Three major parts comprise a surface-mount assembly, including the surface mount component the printed circuit board and the solder joint. In SMT, the surface mount components and conductive foil traces are located on the same side of the PCB, allowing the surface mount components to be soldered directly to the circuit pads. The PCB surface may be either plastic or ceramic, and may be flexible or ridged. The major difference between conventional through-hole components and surface mount components is that the latter do not have wire leads or pins. Cost reduction and Improved Operation achieved with SMT Efficient use of PCB space is essential in supplying electronic end products as they become increasingly smaller (Outlook 99). Smaller surface mounted components are used to reduce the size of electronic assemblies. For most systems, the board area can be reduced by 50% for a single sided board, and by mounting components on both sides, another reduction factor of two can be achieved. Conversely, by using surface mounted components, the functional density can be doubled in the same area. By using SMT and converting from standard logic integrated circuits to