Greg Gonzales, V.P. of Business Development, Revco Products

The events of 2020, while challenging for all, further underscored the critical requirement for building systems and business protocols that can weather crisis and change -- be it a global pandemic or a local event.

For ECD customers, access to our free online tools and training courses, readily available support staff and quality technologies have helped enable manufacturing continuity for many years and, during COVID, these resources were definitely more widely embraced. Because ECD's business and our customers' organizations were deemed 'essential', operations continued unabated even though they looked a bit different.

Despite the unusual year, ECD engineering teams developed and launched new products, and extended existing technologies into new markets over the last twelve months.

The eagerly-awaited SelectiveRIDER™ selective soldering verification pallet debuted in Q4 last year, our SmartDRY™ Intelligent Dry Storage portfolio continued its growth trajectory in electronics and made significant inroads into the 3D printing space, while OvenSENTINEL™ reflow continuous monitoring V2 software improved on its predecessor and is now globally available following initial rollout to a select customer base. The latter will be particularly important for high-reliability markets such as automotive, where extreme traceability and Industry 4.0 processes are required -- especially as electronics content in vehicles continues to grow.

ECD expects the electronics assembly industry to show limited recovery in the first six months of 2021, with more modest production upticks in the latter half of the year.