Supporting a fragile industry [changes in the electronics market]

The early 1990´s saw the introduction of a new innovation in component placement technology. By the mid-90´s the electronics industry was moving towards complex circuit boards and continuously accelerate through the 90´s, but at the start of the new millennium came the most dramatic downturn for the electronics industry. While at present, the electronics market is still subdued; the automotive sector electronics continues to grow steadily. The automotive product spectrum is very wide, but where component placement and assembly processes are concerned this put the focus firmly on quality and process control. In this paper, we discuss the problems encountered by the electronics industry because of its sudden downturn and suggests some solutions to cope with the problems.