Mathew Stevenson, VP of Sales and Marketing, Sunstone Circuits®

2022 will continue to face multiple challenges: labor and components shortages from the pandemic as well as the market trends towards smaller lot sizes and shorter times to market.

To cope with what's ahead, the industry needs a kind of flexible scalability. Industry 4.0 integrations, promising advanced production that is digital from start to finish, are becoming serious realities to consider.

These same integrated solutions are also giving us new avenues towards more innovative electronic devices and with greater speed. This presents a prospect for onshoring of both prototyping and NPI that will reduce unwanted IP exposure.

The electronics assembly industry is evolving fast, going far beyond incremental improvements towards giant leaps in capability. The decision on how to adapt may come in the year to come

In November 2021, Essemtec merged with Nano Dimension, a pioneer in Additively Manufactured Electronics (AME). While Essemtec will continue to develop and deliver leading assembly solutions, the merger immediately generated powerful synergies.

The combined vision of additive plus assembly will materialize in 2022. I predict that this pairing will scale up the value proposition for advanced electronics prototyping and production onshore.

We are seeing the convergence of these powerful technologies together with AI into a unique solution not seen before. It's something we’ll all need to get ready for.