Gentlemen and Ladies

We certainly have a highly inflammatory topic to deal with here.

And although labor rates are dramatically lower in Asia, it is not
necessarily obvious that that is the big driver, as I saw more automation in
Asia than I have seen in the US at the board fabrication level, and this does
not seem to mesh with a low labor rate.

I see a couple, maybe three things that drive this situation.

One being the cost of capitol, or money.  I am under the impression that many
large firms are being offered essentially interest free loans, which may even
be forgiven, to build in Asia.  This would explain the presence of expensive
automation.

Another issue is the absence of any agencies like EPA and OSHA.  Compliance
here is very expensive.

And the third being the quality issue.  Let us face the sad reality that
many/most customer rejects in the PCB area are completely cosmetic, and have
little to do with functionality, and I have heard that such seemingly
nonsensical standards are being relaxed, or abandoned, only partially because
of the difficulty of communicating the nature of the problem to a completely
foreign culture.

We are sadly shipping far too high a fraction of our output to Asia.

Rudy Sedlak
RD Chemical Company

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