Call for papers for China SMT Forum 2008 now open

After its successful premier last year in Shanghai, the China SMT Forum has now been scheduled for November 4-6, 2008 and will take place in the Shanghai Inter-national Exhibition Center (INTEX). The organiser Business Media China AG has issued the call for pa-pers and is again expecting 250 participants for the conference and most industry leaders to attend the newly developed exhibition, which is already half sold out.

The conference program will be planned again by a professional committee, which is directed by Prof. Dr. Mathias Nowottnick (University of Rostock, Germany). Further committee members are renowned per-sons representing the scientific as well as the application-oriented sectors of the industry: Prof. Bernd Michel, Prof. Thomas Gessner, and Mr. Rolf Aschenbrenner from the Fraunhofer IZM, Germany, as well as representatives from leading industry players such as Heraeus, Seho, Siemens, and Flextronics.

For the conference, the committee has defined six sessions on Lead-free Soldering and RoHS-conform Technologies, Semiconductor Packaging and Power Electronics, PCB Technologies, Surface Finishes and Quality Control, Reliability and Testing, Assembling and Soldering Technologies, and a session on Electronic Markets and Future Trends. Paper abstracts should fit into these topics and should be submit-ted before April 15, 2008.

The first China SMT Forum was held from March 22-23, 2007, at the Shanghai International Convention Center. The conference hosted more than 200 domestic and international delegates from over 100 companies representing the SMT, semiconductor, and microelectronics manufacturing industry. Approxi-mately 60% of the attendees came from the application sector; around 30% represented equipment sup-pliers, including key players like Sharp, Intel, Panasonic, GE, Huatian, Flextronics, Vtech, Huawei, Juki, Siemens, Philips, Bosch, Guangda, and many more. The keynote speakers Prof. Hans-Jürgen Albrecht (Siemens), Dongkai Shangguan (Flextronics), Dr. Hannes Voraberger (AT&S), Joey Pan (Bosch Sensortec), and Prof. Wolfgang Scheel (Fraunhofer IZM) presented insights into the latest developments of the industry and guaranteed the high level of the event.

The target of the China SMT Forum is to include the Chinese market into the global information ex-change in the fields of SMT, electronic packaging, and assembly. In order to realise this target and to respond to the industry's strong demand, the organiser will establish a concurrent exhibition that will showcase state-of-the-art solutions and future technology trends. The China SMT Forum is supported by major industry leaders as well as the Productronic section of the German Manufacturers Association (VDMA Productronic).

China's SMT equipment market is predicted to experience continuous growth due to increasing market demand from end-user sectors. Recent data from Frost & Sullivan reveal that China's SMT equipment market earned revenues of USD 1.8 billion in 2004 and is expected to reach USD 3.5 billion in 2011.

Further information regarding the China SMT Forum can be found online at: http://www.chinasmtforum.com/