Joint Research Yields Big Payoffs for
U.S. Printed Wiring Board Industry

• Project credited with saving the U.S. printed wiring board industry with its 200,000 jobs.

• Industry saves $35.5 million in research costs and millions more via increased productivity.

• Technology transfer hastened by 214 research papers.

Consumers--and virtually everyone else who uses electronic products--are likely to benefit from reduced costs and improved quality in a broad range of technologies as a result of a collaborative research venture that produced dramatic advances for the U.S. printed wiring board (PWB) industry. Co-funded by the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), the project has boosted the prospects of the $7 billion industry, which had been losing world market share since the early 1980s. This decline was alarming because PWBs are ubiquitous, connecting individual electronic devices in dozens of products--from copy machines, pagers, and computers to radar, industrial sensors, and biomedical implants. National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) President John Decaire has said the ATP project literally saved the industry. Market trends lend support to these assertions: The U.S. share of the PWB market increased from a low of 26 percent in the early 1990s to 31 percent in 1996, and orders were up nearly 20 percent as of mid-1997.

The project, which was coordinated by the NCMS, teamed six top U.S. PWB suppliers and users and Sandia National Laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy. Between mid-1991 and mid-1996, the venture hastened progress on and substantially reduced the costs of 32 research tasks and enabled the industry to pursue 30 other tasks that would not have been possible without ATP funding, according to an independent economic study funded by NIST. The study also provided examples of the resulting initial productivity gains, including a reduction in PWB ply count that saves one firm more than $3 million annually; reduced scrap due to a new model for predicting PWB layer shrinkage, saving one firm more than $1.4 million annually; and improved coating and soldering techniques, credited by one firm with reducing solder joint defects by 50 percent. The venture succeeded not only in terms of technical accomplishments but also by fostering spin-off projects that may further boost the industry's fortunes, especially in the hot portable electronics market. For example, a group of engineers involved in the project started a new company that now tests sample boards for major corporate clients around the world.

ATP funding: $13,783,000
Company funding: $14,674,000

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June 1998