productronica - 40 years old and still very relevant

Electronic systems have made it safer to fly or travel by train and the global defence industries have been major beneficiaries of electronics in all its forms. And these are just a few examples that show how electronics now dominates our lives.

Witnessing and showcasing all this change since 1964 has been an exhibition organiser - Messe München - who, with the support of a number of manufacturers from the United States, established an exhibition platform for the global electronics industry – electronica.

From that first year of 1964, exhibitors and visitors from all parts of the World have descended on Munich for the biennial electronica trade fair which became the premier event for the global electronics industry and has been so for many years.

So successful was electronica in its first decade that it outgrew the old Munich exhibition grounds to such an extent that there was a significant exhibitor waiting list which always left many companies disappointed. So the decision was taken to establish a new exhibition platform to cater for a key section of the industry and relieve the space pressure on electronica. As a result, productronica came into being in 1975 as an event for the electronics production industry also to be held biennially in the year between electronica.

Instant success

The first productronica was very successful, with 94 companies from twelve countries showcasing their products to 3,915 visitors from 33 countries. For the first time, visitors got to see production machines working in demonstration areas and no longer needed to make a further appointment to see them at the manufacturer. As basic as it was in the late 1960s, the entire electronics production chain was on display from elementary design systems and early numerically controlled machines to test and measurement instrumentation.

By the fourth exhibition in 1981, productronica had established itself as a leading international trade fair - with a total of 667 exhibitors from 21 countries. With components becoming smaller, higher in density, more difficult to manufacture and harder to test, the electronics production industry continued to respond with new generations of machines that allowed the industry to manufacture ever smaller and more powerful components and systems.

By 1985, everything centred around SMT driven by constant increases in miniaturisation while at the same time the ability to mount components on both sides of a PCB cut space requirements by 50%. New soldering methods were developed and screen printing techniques were fine-tuned to maximise the benefits of surface mount components. productronica 1985 featured a special SMT show to focus on this important topic. By the way, as an indication of how size and densities had progressed by the 1980’s, Toshiba launched the first 1Mb DRAM in 1985.

Systems compatibility

At the same time, machine manufacturers began to collaborate with each another. They realised that no matter how capable a machine is on its own, it needed to be compatible with other machines that shared the production environment. To demonstrate this, the focus of productronica in 1987 was to present entire production lines - regardless of which technology they used.

During the 1980s, new competition emerged in Asia to which plant and machine manufacturers as well as their entire supplier industry had to adjust. Of course Asia brought many advantages including massive new growth markets from which the industry still profits today. The flipside however was that competition for production technology also emerged in Asia. At the time, semiconductor production was on its way to realising structures in the sub-μm range which, although standard today, were a major challenge then. Getting there was only possible by collaboration. To hold its own against global competitors, the European Union's Joint European Submicron Silicon Initiative (JESSI) was established. As part of that programme, various research organisations and companies from countries including France, The United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany collaborated with each other from 1991 until the end of 1997. The objective was to produce a 64Mb device which remained a constant topic at productronica throughout the 1990s.

Lead free

Other key topics that dominated productronica in the late 1990s included new assembly techniques, lead-free solder alloys and the enormous progress in packaging technology - an area in which European research and production engineering remains the leader.

The ban on the use of solders containing lead in manufacturing remained an important topic into the 2000s and brought soldering-machine manufacturers a significant increase in sales during this period.

At the same time, the progress in miniaturisation continued both at the chip level as well as for entire assemblies and in system integration. For example, so-called 'eGrains' (or chips equipped with sensors and radio) were introduced and used in applications such as logistics, games and even golf balls. They were also capable of being used in production. This topic was the focus of the 'Match X special show at productronica in 2001 and the fair took up and further developed this topic in the years that followed. The result: Small, autonomously networked microsensors that now go by the name cyber-physical systems. The foundation of today's Industry 4.0 and the IoT had arrived.

Flat screens

Thanks to the use of liquid crystals, products that was seen as impossible in the 1990s were increasingly becoming a reality early in the new Millennium. The flat-screen display made laptops possible and was increasingly used in computers and televisions. Messe München took advantage of the opportunity to organise two special shows on the topic in 2001 and 2003 together with the VDMA. Exhibits included materials and components for flat-screen displays as well as machines for making the flat-screen products themselves.

In 2005, there was a special show on the new topic of printed electronics. The new technology was thin, lightweight and flexible with devices printed using reel-to-reel techniques on plastic film, OLEDs and photovoltaics.

Industry 4.0

Although the foundations for Industry 4.0 were laid in the early 2000s, it was actually 'born' at productronica 2009 - with an initial collaborative project on Self-Organising PROduction (SOPRO). The term referred to the idea of adaptive automation in the factory with machine-to-workpiece communication using cyber-physical systems as the hardware core and was demonstrated at productronica using 'wandering' laptops. Even through the topic was criticised as being too academic and too futuristic - those in the know recognised the capabilities of intralogistics and the digital factory.

Electromobility was one of the focal points of productronica 2011 with a special show on Battery Manufacturing and Power Electronics. A 'virtual factory' at the show allowed visitors to configure a battery production line interactively and to even draw up cost scenarios. Two years later, automotive applications were a topic again, but as always, productronica added an innovative touch. Using an excavator, productronica demonstrated the topic of "Extreme Automotive Electronics and presented sensors, power electronics, interiors, plug connectors and the entire range of production technologies that electronics make possible and their use in the most extreme environmental conditions - a strength of the European industry.

productronica 2015 will allow visitors to experience Industry 4.0 live with the help of five select electronics-manufacturing machines. For the first time ever, visitors will be able to 'look' into a machine and follow complex processes between machines and workpieces that until now were hidden.

So that brings the productronica story right up to date and there is no doubt that the trade fair, along with its bigger 'brother' electronica will be showcasing the electronics industry in all its forms for another 40 years.