CPMT Embarks on defining its Strategy for the next decade with Brainstorming as the first step
President Rao Tummala set the tone to your Board of Governors in February pointing out that the Internet is changing everything. The digital revolution first enhanced computation until it became embedded in everything engineers do. Now digitalization is pervading communications so that everything a professional society can and must be can be made more salient and efficient. CPMT must be on the cutting edge of these advances or we will let down our membership. The incoming President emphasized the need to redefine the CPMT strategy and it is his first priority as president to do so.
Eight Groups were formed to brainstorm about the future of markets and technology. From this brainstorming came the beginnings of CPMT strategy. Rao Tummala charged the discussion groups with 4 visions: Networking the world, Fostering Technology Innovation, Enabling Members Careers, and Providing a Community Worldwide. The brainstorms were to provide answers in 4 time spans:
**What should be the long term vision spanning 10-20 years?
**What CPMT strategy should therefore be implemented for the next 5 years?
**What specific actions are needed in the next 2 years?
**Are there any budget or operation changes needed this year in preparation?
Initial Reports
Industry Partnership Vision – Ron Gedney
Over the last decade, many large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have off-loaded their manufacturing to contract manufacturers, such as Solectron and Celestica. Many OEMs have become virtual companies retaining only system design, sales and marketing. As the OEMs have outsourced manufacturing they have cut their engineering and support staffs accordingly. While OEMs spend, on the average, some 7% of sales on research and development, contract manufacturers typically spend less than 1%. So thousands of jobs that used to fall in CPMT’s field of interest have simply disappeared in North America. Contract manufacturers are, for the most part, global entities and much of the manufacturing work has been moved offshore. In the future, CPMT must engage more with the contract manufacturers and prepare for a global membership. Growth will not come from North America in our field.
Although there has been a reduction of several hundred million dollars a year in R & D spending in our field of interest since 1990, we do not seem to be suffering for lack of technology. Three developments seem to account for this. First, the continued rise in the integration of silicon means electronic boxes are continuing to decrease in size requiring less real estate in packaging (although the packaging is getting more dense and more complex). Second, industry-wide roadmaps have identified the key technology developments needed. The rise of Consortia has allowed the remaining development force to concentrate their efforts, share pre-competitive work, and in essence, do more with less. In addition, the universities have moved into applied research, again largely based on industry road maps, so that advanced technology is also targeted toward developments that will have immediate application.
Another development that must be recognized is that the computer has, for the most part, become a commodity product. As such it is no longer the key driver of technology (but of cost!). Over the next few years, growth in the electronics industry is going to be driven by telecommunications. Hand held devices are driving very dense and high performance package developments. Advances in optical fiber communications and wireless communications are changing the global society. We are seeing more and more photonics and software content in telecom product to handle data rich systems. It behooves CPMT to have cooperative efforts with LEOS and MTTS.

Financial Vision – Merrill Palmer
If CPMT wants to align with the IEEE mission statement, probably we could offer more career help such as job opening postings for members only on the web. Our technical information and evaluations will be more trusted than commercial data since it is peer reviewed. Today we are not adequately reaching the manufacturing engineers or young engineers.
Society revenue will be challenged by the trend in web publication. The advantage of lower cost of distribution could be overshadowed by the possibility of losing most revenue from our archival publications. However, the growing need for education, both short courses and on-line tutoring, could be our growing revenue area. Virtual conferences may also offer more availability to our members but we must make sure the revenue model is sustaining. We do have enough reserves to engage in new programs in the foreseeable future.
Society expenditures will also change. The IEEE overhead charges will probably increase in the short term since they lack fiscal discipline. Since our activities have doubled in the last 5 years it may be necessary to go beyond the one IEEE staff on the CPMT team. For example, staff to administrate the web based paper review tracking software may be a large improvement.
Specific recommendations include:
**Survey members to determine best added value.
**Offer more local meetings for manufacturing engineers.
**Help steer the IEEE electronic publishing thrust to make sure
revenue is protected.
**Offer option that if you accept electronic only Newsletter you
pay only $5 in dues.

Publication Vision – Paul Wesling
We will migrate to electronic handling and delivery of our publications. This will allow quicker turn around of manuscripts and for a more personalized delivery of articles to our members. However wonderful this trend seems, it will take years because of the slow cultural change our members must undergo. We search, store, move, and read paper publications with the greatest of ease, but we all still feel somewhat awkward in an electronics only world. Perhaps CPMT can provide a training path to help transition our members from pages to mouse clicks.
The paper journal will have a diminishing role for about 10 years. Some members will print out everything CPMT sends them over the web, but good printers are now affordable to engineers. Internet IEEE archives will allow current IEEE members to search and download articles going back at least to 1988.
Within CPMT, web services will expand to TCs, Chapters, and action committees. Tutorials for training will be both generated and used by members. "Members Only" sections of our web site will ensure that our members have an edge in the marketplace.
A first step to this electronics future is to have Tony Dong He of IEEE present the current status and future implementation of electronic publishing at the Institute. As we convert we want to both lower the cost in time and money for our members, but also keep the same net publications revenue to the society. This revenue is half of our annual budget. Therefore we must be careful we do not freely distribute our seed corn, and put our Society out of business.
Since only a small percentage of our members can make any particular CPMT sponsored meeting, one CPMT goal should be to create "virtual meetings" for those that can’t attend. Such a service may consist of streaming audio with view graphs of the speakers available on demand a few days after the meeting. In addition, having the Proceedings on-line would help a lot of our members.
Most publication initiatives have equal parts of Conferences and Education committee responsibility. New interactions will be needed to pursue these initiatives.

Technical Activities Vision – Phil Garrou
The mission continues to be to "deliver the latest technology to the broadest audience." However this mission does not stand alone but rather is joint with the TCs, Education, Conference, and Publications committees. The newer topics confronted by our members are interdisciplinary and often intersociety (LEOS, ASME, and ED). In addition, the technology front for CPMT is being pushed by engineers in many countries of the world.
In the short term we must update the Technical Committee Handbook. In the process it will be necessary to continue redirecting, ending, and starting committees. In addition, the Education Vice President will need to update the CPMT Lecturers list and the syllabus for CPMT Short Courses. The VP of Publications must update the matrix on experts for paper reviews. The VP of conferences must reassign each CPMT sponsored meeting to one or more TCs with individual ownership called out. We should experiment with ½ day "expert sessions" tacked onto our existing Conferences and make sure the keynote talk explains the nature of this area to a CPMT member.
Over the next 2 years we should expect 3 – 5 TCs will sponsor expert sessions including at least one outside of North America. Within 5 years the TCs should be the expected resource to activate any idea in our Society.
Short term goals include:
** Refine TC handbook – establish 6 new TCs
** Board of Governors make sure all TCs have REAL value
** Establish policy on Chair turnover
** Continue bridge building between ECTC and CPMT
committees
** Look at IEEE and CPMT membership versus activities
** Establish web page, recommended book titles, and web
courses for every TC to create.

Conferences Vision – Jim Morris
Our mission is to enhance and announce technical innovation. We must continue to promote conferences on the international level. However, to more effectively use our members’ and volunteers’ time we must merge similar conferences and eliminate outdated or irrelevant ones. To help enable member careers we must direct more sessions to students and recent graduates. Encourage the manning of Poster Sessions by the movers and shakers in the industry so all members can create significant contacts. Invite key Posters and hold a social hour among the Posters so technical interchange is easy.
ECTC is increasing in size. In the next few years topics must be shed or time staggered so a member does not have to stay for a whole week to cover their topic. It may be time to schedule another CPMT activity with the IEMT Symposium. For all our meetings it is necessary to build a better publicity track working with trade journals and the press. Availability of key meeting Proceedings at our members only web site may be another benefit.

Education Vision – Al Puttlitz
Our goal should be that of the leader in e-learning in our field. We should serve both members and non-members (for a price). We will create one course in 2001 that will be live and interactively on-line. One advantage of on-line short courses is that they favor no particular global location. We must develop a contract for the course authors that both encourages the creation of courses but also economically encourages members to participate. We must look to the TCs to champion web course topics. One timely course would be focused on "Internet Technology" from the CPMT perspective. The design and manufacture of all the fiber opto-electronics, electronics switching, and telecommunications modules are employing more of our members each year.
Near term we want to continue partnering with Motorola on their Fellowship. In the long run we need similar programs in Opto-electronics and materials.
We must ask ourselves if we could promote international experiences for CPMT engineering students since our activities are quiet global. A database of student opportunities and competitive grants may encourage this activity.

International Awards and Nominations – John Segelken and Rao Bonda
While our Society has grown the number and diversity of awards as the membership and technologies have grown, it will look at recognizing individual contributions to the technology and to the Society in every category. But for now, two items must be improved: Publicity of awards so as to get the maximum number of nominations particularly from outside US and secondly recognizing international contributions. In addition, the prestige of receiving these awards will have to be improved. The awards both honor our members and broadcast the CPMT Brand Name.

Globalization Vision – Ralph Russell
A near term goal is to interrogate the IEEE membership database so we understand the global distribution of our members better. We need to understand this to target areas for Chapter growth and to host conferences. The sense now is that natural member enthusiasm has created a close balance already. However, there are places with lots of telecommunication and computer manufacturing industries with little CPMT activities (Canada comes to mind).

A longer term goal is to investigate the distance meeting technology to determine how CPMT can hold conferences simultaneously at multiple locales. For example, many U.S. members could get permission to fly to Dallas to a video conference facility to participate in a European Conference session but never get permission for foreign travel. CPMT Distinguished Lecturers could speak at more Chapter meetings if video links became easier to use.