NIST helps set the standards across the electronics manufacturing supply chain. (News Briefs).

From telecommunications to personal computing, electronics manufacturers are no longer competing globally as individual companies but as partners within a complex web of suppliers. The ability of a company to recoup its investment costs depends on the speed with which it can get products to the international market, ramp up to volume production, and scale production back to meet changing demand. To facilitate entry in various markets and to keep costs under control, large manufacturers are outsourcing nearly every aspect of the production cycle, from design through assembly, to logistics, warranty, and repair.

Through the joint leadership of a NIST researcher and a private company manager, several standards to facilitate supply communication were released in November 2001. At a panel led by the NIST researcher at this year's IPC APEX conference, company representatives discussed how they are now building these new standards, including the IPC Product Data eXchange (PDX) suite and a number of RosettaNet Partner Interface Process (PIP) specifications into their outsourcing strategy. During the Spanning the Virtual Factory--Managing Supply Chain Communications forum in January, a telecommunications company revealed an information architecture with PDX at the center. While they've had to adapt some of their own applications to take advantage of the standards, many of their suppliers are already providing compliant products. As is the case with other major manufacturers, they are putting standard-based implementations into production.

For slides from the APEX forum, refer to www.nemi.org. To download the PDX standards, refer to http://webstds.ipc.org/. To download RosettaNet PIPs 2C1 through 2C10, refer to www.rosettanet.org.

CONTACT: Barbara Goldstein, [phone]; [e-mail].