News Briefs

LTX (Westwood, MA) has announced the culmination of its 18-month, multiphase initiative to transfer the manufacture of its Fusion HF test system to Jabil Circuit's Billerica, MA, facility. Under the initiative, Jabil will dedicate a scalable, modular production line solely to the Fusion HF platform. This should reduce Fusion production and planning times by as much as 50% compared with LTX performing final system assembly and test in house.

With the completion of the initiative, LTX becomes the first ATE maker to completely outsource production of its systems, according to LTX president and COO Dave Tacelli. LTX's expertise, he says, lies in designing systems containing thousands of parts—not in making sure that all those parts get to the right place in a production line at the right time. With Jabil handling the manufacturing logistics, LTX can focus on system design, Tacelli says.

Asked if outsourcing all manufacturing and test functions would compromise quality, Tacelli responds with an adamant no: "We have never been manufacturing specialists. By moving Fusion production to a company that is, we will actually improve quality." www.ltx.com

Do you know an engineer who has tackled and solved some of the industry's toughest challenges in test, measurement, or inspection?

Test & Measurement World welcomes your suggestions, as we launch our new "Test Engineer of the Year" award program. To be presented for the first time during the APEX Show in February 2004, the award will honor an outstanding technical leader, as voted by the readers of our magazine. The winning engineer will designate an engineering school to receive a $20,000 educational grant, courtesy of the award sponsor, National Instruments.

T&MW VP/Publisher Larry Maloney announced the new award during the magazine's annual "Best in Test" awards event on March 31 during the APEX Show in Anaheim, CA. "It is very exciting to be able to honor an engineer whose work represents the very best in the test field,'' said Maloney, "and we are very grateful to National Instruments for making this new award possible."

Commenting on his company's sponsorship, National Instruments President James Truchard noted: "National Instruments recognizes the critical role that the test engineer plays in the manufacture of highly reliable products in our fast-paced world. Reliability and time-to-market requirements have never been greater, and Test & Measurement World's Engineer of the Year award is a great opportunity to recognize the test engineer's valuable role in meeting this challenge."

The editors of T&MW will evaluate candidates for the award and will publish profiles of prominent engineers in our September issue. A ballot will be bound into the story so readers can vote for the individual they believe should be the "Test Engineer of the Year." A story on the top vote getter will appear in our March 2004 issue.

To nominate a candidate for the award, e-mail a short description of the engineer's major accomplishments, along with contact information, to our editorial staff at erodonnell@reedbusiness.com  by Friday, June 13.

Soft demand on the domestic front is offsetting stronger demand overseas, Tektronix (Beaverton, OR) said as it announced its fiscal Q3 results last month. The company posted net sales of $188.3 million, with net earnings from continuing operations of $900,000 or 1 cent per share, for the quarter ended March 1.

Although sales are fairly stable from the year-ago quarter's $199.3 million, net earnings from continuing operations have declined drastically from $11.9 million, or 13 cents per share. "During the quarter, we saw stronger demand in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Japan. We continued to build on our success in China, highlighted by key customer wins in the mobile protocol test area and partnerships with key government agencies," said Rick Wills, Tektronix chairman and CEO, in a statement. "However, we saw softer demand in the United States across most product lines resulting from caution caused by geopolitical uncertainty and the continued sluggishness of our underlying markets."

Also last month, the company continued its investment in China by opening a new manufacturing facility in Shanghai. Tek now has 10 locations in China, including sales, service, and manufacturing facilities. www.tektronix.com.

The American Society of Test Engineers (ASTE), in conjunction with the NEPCON family of exhibitions, has awarded $2500 scholarships to two PhD candidates in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. Young Jun Lee and Luco Schiano were presented their awards on January 31 at the Northeastern University Faculty Club in Boston, MA. (NEPCON and T&MW have the same parent company.)

The students submitted papers to the ASTE's annual scholarship competition. Young Jun Lee's winning submission was "Analysis and Measurement of Timing Jitter Introduced by Radiated EMI Noise in Automatic Test Equipment," while Luco Schiano submitted "An On-Line Testing Solution for Power Supply Noise Detection."

Applications for the 2003 award are available on the ASTE Web site. www.astetest.org/scholarship.

Credence Systems (Fremont, CA) has announced a multisystem order of its Kalos and Personal Kalos memory test systems from Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (GSMC), a China-based wafer foundry. GSMC will employ the 50-MHz, 48-pin Personal Kalos for engineering test development and will use the Kalos production system for high-volume test of nonvolatile memories; the production version can test up to 32 flash NOR devices, 64 NAND flash devices, or 128 serial nonvolatile memory devices in parallel.

In addition, Credence and tester interface supplier inTest (Cherry Hill, NJ; www.intest.com) have announced that Credence will use a manipulator from inTest in its ASL 3000 and ASL 3000RF testers. The companies' mutual Taiwan and Southeast Asia distributors will also pursue opportunities to integrate and market inTest products with Credence testers, the companies said. www.credence.com.

ESTECH 2003, May 18–21, Phoenix. The annual technical meeting of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST). 847-255-1561; www.iest.org/estech/estech.htm .

Supercomm, June 1–5, Atlanta. The conference covers communications and information technology. Sponsored by Telecommunications Industry Association and United States Telecom Association. 301-694-5243; www.supercomm2003.com .

Design Automation Conference (DAC), June 2–6, Anaheim, CA. Topics include design methodologies and electronic design automation (EDA) tool developments. 303-530-4562; www.dac.com .

International Robots & Vision Show, June 3–5, Rosemont, IL. Topics include improving product quality and lowering manufacturing costs. Sponsored by Automated Imaging Association. www.robots-vision-show.info .

International Microwave Symposium, June 8–13, Philadelphia. Topics include modeling, simulation, and measurement techniques. Sponsored by IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S). www.ims2003.org .

NEPCON East 2003/Assembly East, June 10–11, Boston. These co-located shows cover electronics manufacturing and components. Sponsored by Reed Exhibition Cos. 800-467-5656; www.nepcon.com .

Semicon West, July 14–18. The show will be split into two parts: wafer processing—July 14–16 in San Francisco; final manufacturing (including test)—July 16–18 in San Jose. Sponsored by SEMI. 408-943-6901; www.semicon.org .

EMC Symposium, August 18–22, Boston. Sponsored by IEEE, EMC Society. 732-562-3870; www.emc2003.org .

National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC) 2003, September 7–11, Orlando. Sponsored by Telcordia Technologies. 973-829-4832; www.nfoec.com .

To learn about other conferences, courses, and calls for papers, go to www.tmworld.com/events.