CPMT Society and NEMI Join Forces with New Partnership

The CPMT Society and the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI), an industry-led consortium focused on strengthening the global electronics supply chain, recently entered into a formal agreement outlining key areas of collaboration between the two organizations.

One of the primary collaborations under this new agreement will be roadmap development, beginning with the 2004 NEMI roadmap. The roadmaps, created every two years, map the future manufacturing needs of the electronics industry and identify key technology and infrastructure developments required to assure leadership of the global supply chain over the next decade. It helps companies anticipate shifts in product requirements and provides an early warning of changes in technology or infrastructure.

Both the Society and NEMI realized that many of our own members' fields of expertise complement and substantially overlap. In fact, many CPMT Society members have already represented their respective employers in the development of previous NEMI roadmaps. It made sense that the two organizations should collaborate on a more formal basis.

"NEMI has been involved with deriving roadmaps for important cutting-edge technologies and we are excited to partner with this prestigious organization," said Phil Garrou, CPMT Society President. "CPMT's partnering with NEMI in the roadmapping activity will hopefully produce an even better forecast of future technology directions," he adds.

NEMI is also embracing a more global perspective. With more than 40 percent of the Society's members outside the United States, the CPMT Society is offering experienced professionals from Europe, Asia and North America to many of the NEMI roadmap chapter committees. Involvement of this broad-based group will help NEMI in its efforts to globalize the scope of the 2004 roadmap.
Conversely, NEMI plans to participate in our activities by collaborating on CPMT Society-sponsored conferences, workshops and refereed publications. The CPMT Society will also coordinate with the NEMI Technical Committee to develop R&D priorities.
Rolf Aschenbrenner, Vice President of Technical Activities for the CPMT Society notes, "We look forward to NEMI members presenting their work at CPMT Society workshops and conferences as well as soliciting papers for IEEE CPMT Transactions journals. In fact, we are already coordinating a NEMI tin whisker workshop as part of our Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) in Las Vegas this June."

NEMI sees this partnership as a win-win situation as well. "We have worked informally with the CPMT Society for many years, but wanted to form a more structured relationship with planned activities that would allow us to work together rather than just doing things on an opportunistic basis," said Jim McElroy, Executive Director and CEO of NEMI. "The two organizations share many areas of focus and activity, and we feel there are a number of synergies to be gained by collaborating."

The two organizations launched the partnership at NEMI's 2004 roadmap kick-off meeting, 24-25 March in Newark, California USA. For more information about NEMI, visit www.nemi.org.

NEMI Jim McElroy handshake partnership with CPMT Phil Garrou