The Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA) celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. In honor of this milestone, Mohan Mankikar, president, Micro-Tech Consultants, chronicles the history of this organization in “PSMA—20 Years Of Growth and Challenges.” This article appears in the latest edition of the PSMA Update, a quarterly newsletter.
In his article, Mankikar describes how the PSMA began with “a small group of dedicated professionals from the power supply industry” meeting at a power supply conference. Because many of these individuals had backgrounds in the computer and disk drive industries, they understood the value of professional and trade organizations. As members of the merchant power supply industry, they sensed that the industry lacked a “voice” and was therefore underappreciated. In response to this need, the PSMA was formed.
Mankikar describes the early struggles of the PSMA to establish itself amidst all the change taking place in the industry. As Mankikar writes, “Companies with captive power supply producers were becoming merchant suppliers; the power supply business was moving from a traditional low-volume industry toward high-volume business, creating intense price pressures; domestic suppliers were being challenged by a host of emerging Far East suppliers; and high-density dc-dc converters were coming into their own with the adoption of distributed power architectures.”
Mankikar also details the successes of the organization, such as producing the first Handbook of Standardized Terminology for the Power Sources Industry and a then-controversial “Customer Perception Report." Furthermore, he describes how the organization’s prospects improved greatly when it became a sponsor of APEC and how the organization has expanded through alliances with power supply organizations in Europe and China.
For more information, visit www.psma.com/HTML/newsletter/start_here.html.