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NEMI Honors Outstanding Leadership
New awards program recognizes individual
and team contributions to NEMI and industry
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HERNDON, Va. - September 27, 2002 - The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) recently recognized a project team and two individuals for their service to NEMI and to the electronics manufacturing industry. This recognition is part of a new awards program established this year by the NEMI board of directors to honor significant contributions made to NEMI's endeavors.
NEMI's Lead-Free Assembly Project received an award for Outstanding Team Accomplishment. Lead-free team leaders include: Edwin Bradley (Motorola Inc.), project chair; Richard Charbonneau (StorageTek), project co-chair; Jasbir Bath (Solectron Corporation), Process Group leader; Carol Handwerker (NIST), Alloy Group leader; Richard Parker (Delphi Electronics), Components Group leader; and John Sohn (Lucent Technologies, retired), Reliability Group leader. In addition, John Cartwright of Intel Corporation and Barbara Goldstein of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) received Outstanding Individual Leadership awards.
"NEMI is a 'virtual consortium' with a small staff and limited budget," said Jim McElroy, executive director and CEO of NEMI. "The work accomplished by our various projects and programs is carried out by individuals within our members' organizations who volunteer their time to these efforts. Any given project represents countless hours of work by numerous people from a diverse set of companies, universities, government agencies and other consortia or industry associations. It is the commitment of these many volunteers that makes NEMI successful and allows us to have a real impact. This awards program was established to recognize those individuals or teams who have truly outstanding records of accomplishment in leading successful NEMI programs."
Criteria for the awards include project accomplishments and impact, the level of interest generated among NEMI members and the level of interest generated within industry.
The Lead-Free Assembly team was recognized for its role in making it practical for North American companies to remain competitive in markets where "lead-free" is either a key selling point (e.g., Japan) or will soon be mandated by legislation (e.g., Europe). Among its many accomplishments, the project team:
- Recommended a tin-silver-copper alloy - Sn3.9Ag0.6Cu (+/- 0.2%) - to replace eutectic tin-lead solder. This alloy is now in production at Motorola.
- Made recommendations (which were adopted by IPC and JEDEC) for changes to the moisture sensitivity level specification in J-STD-020.
- Demonstrated that lead-free solder can be used in high-volume production of electronic assemblies using, for the most part, existing tools and processes.
- Demonstrated that the reliability of SMT solder joints with the chosen lead-free solder alloy is better than or equal to tin-lead solder joints.
- Demonstrated that the chosen alloy was also backward-compatible with tin-lead coated components.
- Demonstrated that X-ray and automated optical inspection techniques work on lead-free solders.
Cartwright's award recognizes his contributions to NEMI's Factory Information Systems (FIS) Technology Integration Group (TIG). He has served as chair or co-chair of the TIG since 1999, and also served as chair and co-chair, respectively, of a Technology Working Group (TWG) for the 1998 and 2002 NEMI roadmaps.
Cartwright was an active participant in the FIS TIG's Plug & Play Factory Project and, subsequently, co-chair of the Virtual Factory Information Interchange Project. He was also instrumental in the formation of NEMI's Data Exchange Convergence Project, which recommended the convergence of two different formats - GenCAM and ODB++ - into a single XML-based data exchange standard. All three projects led to development of new industry standards.
The Plug & Play Project (chaired by Allan Fraser of Teradyne) generated specifications for three IPC CAMX standards to support shop floor interoperability (all of which have been published); and the Virtual Factory Project produced four IPC PDX standards for supply chain communications (three of which have been published; the fourth is in review). The efforts of NEMI's Convergence Project led to formation of a new IPC standards committee to develop a standard that will enable accurate, efficient data exchange between designers and manufacturers of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and printed circuit assemblies (PCAs).
The PDX standards have been further leveraged through integration into RosettaNet Partner Interface ProcessesŪ (PIPsŪ). Cartwright was instrumental in making this happen. He managed development of the related PIPs, serving as product manager for RosettaNet's Cluster 2 PIPs (re: product information) and Cluster 7 PIPs (re: manufacturing).
Goldstein was also recognized for her work with the FIS TIG. She has been chair or co-chair of the TIG since 1997 and chair or co-chair of a TWG for the 1996, 1998 and 2002 roadmaps. She helped define the Plug & Play and Virtual Factory projects and co-chaired the Virtual Factory Project with Cartwright. She was key to organizing meetings, keeping interest high, encouraging participation, building industry awareness, and getting work done.
"The FIS TIG projects and the Lead-Free Assembly Project have been NEMI's most active efforts in the last five years," said McElroy. "These projects have drawn many new members to NEMI and have made significant contributions to industry. A good part of our success in these areas is directly attributable to the outstanding leadership we have seen from these several individuals."
About NEMI
The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative's mission is to facilitate leadership of the North American electronics manufacturing supply chain. Based in Herndon, Va., the industry-led consortium is made up of more than 65 electronics manufacturers, suppliers, industry associations and consortia, government agencies and universities. NEMI roadmaps the needs of the North American electronics industry, identifies gaps in the technology infrastructure, establishes implementation projects to eliminate these gaps (both business and technical), and stimulates standards activities to speed the introduction of new technologies. The consortium also works with government, universities and other funding agencies to set priorities for future industry needs and R&D initiatives. For additional information about NEMI, visit www.nemi.org.
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For further information:
Cynthia Williams
cwilliams@nemi.org
phone: 207-871-1260