in4ma Team Expands
Reliable market data and services are becoming more important in difficult times. When Dieter Weiss of Weiss Engineering started to work in market statistics for the electronics industry 20 years ago, it was considered a side job. The more he dug into the subject the more he realized that there was one industry, which was neglected a lot: the Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry. He started focussing on EMS and first searched the market for information. The result of that search was many reports (lots of paper), which were very expensive and most of them not even close to reality. In 2015 Weiss therefore decided to change this and focus on market research and analyses for the European EMS industry. He created his own brand in4ma ® (information for manufacturers), talked with many European manufacturers and started a three-year research project.
At the end of the project, he had created a databank which contains 2164 EMS legal entities, belonging to about 1805 different companies. This databank not only contains revenues and headcount going back to 2013, but as well has many other economical figures of the companies. This file allowed him to rank the companies by size, calculate revenues by country (there are 37 countries in Europe with EMS companies), calculate growth rates for various revenue groups, show profit margins for benchmarks, analyse labour and material costs and their development and much more.
But where do those numbers come from? What most people do not know, limited companies in Europe must file their annual returns with the country company registers, which is accessible to the public. The amount of information that must be given depends on the size of the company. In addition, Weiss engineering does an annual survey for the European EMS industry in which today more than 225 EMS companies report their numbers, including the market segments they serve. All participants get an 80-page analysis report about 7 weeks after the end of the calendar year. The report is free of charge to participating companies and is used by them as a perfect benchmark against their own numbers.
Besides selling individual market reports and doing customer specific research reports, the work is being co-financed with crowd funding. There are today 56 European EMS companies (more welcome) and 7 suppliers participating in the crowd funding. In addition, in4ma is strongly supported by IPC and supports IPC in return. IPC realized early, that in order to make electronics better, one needs as well qualified market data for the industry to make the right decisions. In addition, in4ma cooperates with European associations ACEM (Moldova), EEIA (Estonia), FHI (Netherlands/Belgium), IG Exact (Switzerland) and Svensk Elektronik (Sweden) and has close working relations with EMSNow.
As time has passed, Weiss has often been asked about retirement. There is no such thing, but Weiss knew he needed to prepare for the unexpected and make sure that the in4ma work continues independently. Since mid- 2021 he has now created a team consisting of Matthias Holsten and Michael Kuensebeck, who work closely together with Weiss on the in4ma projects. The team and their experience in the EMS industry has allowed them to expand their service and since end of 2021 are active as well in the M&A business in Europe, specifically for smaller companies. The team has created an online buyers guide for OEMs, looking for a reliable European EMS partner. This online guide is still being expanded and can be checked out under www.ems-scout.com
Plan to meet the 20 year old in4ma team in Germany this fall: EMS-Tag on September 7./8. 2022 in Wuerzburg (www-ems-tag.de) at electronica on November 15.-18. 2022 in Munich and/or at 5. EMS Europe Seminar on December 1, 2022, in Tallinn/Estonia (www.estonianelectronics.eu).
