Mark Brawley, National Sales Manager Americas, DEK

In all DEK's market sectors, the actions needed to prepare for 2010, and the much anticipated upturn, were taken in 2009. Principally these included improving lines of communication with customers and channel responsiveness. We know from experience that agility is essential in an upturn. Manufacturers tend to ramp up much faster than they scaled down.

Sure, we pursue key product developments in the meantime to address current and emerging semiconductor challenges, many driven by end product miniaturization and mobility. But we also continue to energize other attributes of our business, like knowledge and process skills.

DEK is not a hardware provider; our products are process enablers and it’s this type of expertise that enables great productivity and offers real value – and that’s what the organization is geared up to deliver. We’re not hunkered down or hiding but actively investing.

Certainly there is some cautious optimism out there. Even though most of the real action in Semi is outside North America, we see semi packaging opportunities looking brighter than SMT in the short term, and that the pace of recovery in semi appears to be greater than that of the assembly sector – but then it is the front of the train.