CircuiTree - January 2009 - (Page 30) BPA Growth Curves By Mark Hutton Forecasting and Business Planning Headline s I write this, I am preparing to present an invited paper at HKPCA at the beginning of December in China (of course, you will be reading this afterward!). At the same conference, the well-respected industry expert Gene Weiner is presenting a paper on the history of the PCB industry. With the current slowdown and all the unknowns that go with it, it is interesting to review the key success factors for forecasts, an integral part of business planning. In 1997, BPA started surveying the then-embryonic HDI (build-up board manufacturers). The actual forecast that was published (as shown in Figure 1 and 2) was in a BPA report titled “Build-Up Board Technology, Portable Applications and Beyond 1999-2004.” It turns out that our forecasts were pretty accurate. We can compare our numbers with the actual results tabulated by the IPC: the value equates to a volume conversion of between 20 and 21 million m2, in line with our 1999 forecast. At the time we included high-density flex and flex-rigid. Why? Because at that time four different technologies were considered relevant to the family of HDI technologies: A Figure 1 Worldwide Build-Up Board Production By Region (By Top Surface Area) 2000 to 2003 • Conductive post (e.g., ALIVH from Matsushita, B2IT from Toshiba); • Photoimageable (e.g., IBM Yasu); • Laser drilling (e.g., Ibiden, JVC); and • Plasma etching (e.g., Dyconex). At that time we decided that our definition would include products that were made by these methods, which meant some high-density flex was included. Two other key parameters defining HDI technology in 1997, when we first started surveying manufacturers, were that the vias were at least 100 µm in diameter and that the dielectric materials were unreinforced. Now, of course, sub 100 µm vias are drilled conventionally, as is a significant amount of thin reinforced dielectrics. From our most recent survey, this now accounts for over 70 percent surface area. In 1999, it accounted for less than 1 percent! Therefore, to compare like-for-like, we should add about another 3 million in high-density flex and flex-rigid that was produced in 2007. In my 30 January 2009 • circuitree.com Figure 2 Worldwide Build-Up Board Production By Region (By Top Surface Area) 2004 to 2007 2.2% 2.9% 0.1% 22.7% A S IA JA P A N E UR O P E NO R T H A ME R IC A LV420708 ROW 72.1% Figure 3 Worldwide HDI Production Regional Breakdown 2007 34 http://www.circuitree.com
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