The ShortList – industry’s essential guide
17 August 2009
In some ways the goal of a web site such as EMTWorldWide is to be taken for granted - a resource that everyone knows where it is and can use when needed.
While there is no doubt that we are not quite at the Google level of acceptance, I think we are heading in the right direction. One part of the site in particular has gained its own momentum – The ShortList.
Some parts of the site, such as the Events, Jargon Buster and the articles, all attract prestigious amounts of ‘e-traffic’, but it is the ShortList that has become such an important reference for the industry.
The reason I am writing about it now is two-fold. One is the stage that we are at in the economic cycle and the other, quite simply, is that the editorial team have recently spent many long hours updating the information in it.
Never has this database been a more important tool than now. Recession has delayed investment since the end of last year, but now that the outlook is at last clearing, this autumn could well be a more positive time. With many people having reduced capital tied up in stock, any upturn in demand will be immediately reflected in capacity and many production departments will be making plans to accommodate such positive fluctuations. Not that I anticipate a sudden deluge of orders for new equipment, more of a gradual increase, but none the less, these equipment suppliers have equally been trying to release capital tied up in inventory and a few months of activity could result in lead times stretching beyond the ‘just-in time’ sort of turnaround that has been a feature of the last year.
So while the production engineer might be unsure of the budgets or requirements that may come along in the autumn, now is the ideal time to be doing the groundwork – and this is where the ShortList comes in. This is a database split into nine sections, each section representing the major equipment or material families used in the standard PCB assembly line.
The database is intended to be comprehensive in terms of the companies and products that it covers, but it will only provide the first layer of information about them. No one is going to spend tens of thousands of pounds based on the details we have here, but equally we want to provide the basic information required so that the production manager can draw up a shortlist of which companies to talk to and what products to look at.
There are often surprising new inclusions and useful updates on suppliers you might have thought you knew everything about!
Every supplier in the ShortList has been contacted and all specifications should be refreshed, while new suppliers are added as and when they come to our notice. So if you know of anyone not in our list please let me know. In the meantime, I hope it proves of service to you.
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