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30 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2020 With OEMs, plans to implement digital fac- tory infrastructure was less clear than with manufacturing specialists, even down to the tendency for OEM respondents to leave this question unanswered (Chart 4). When ranking objectives, OEM respondents, like manufacturers, were surprisingly even in their distribution. No one objective rose above the other as a first priority. But looking at the aggregate responses, we can determine that the OEM's primary concerns (at least among manufacturing roles who responded) were: 1. Higher yields 2. Process monitoring and control 3. Less manufacturing waste Conclusions EMS companies and PCB manufacturers are, as a whole, more clear and motivated to act with respect to digital factory conversion than OEMs. This could be, in part, because some OEMs are likely to outsource fabrication and assembly to suppliers, thereby reducing the OEM's level of engagement. That said, many OEMs have their own manufacturing opera- tions, which may be causing them to consider smart factory solutions as well. Overall, as an informal test of the claims about the digital factory marketplace made by current smart factory experts, these numbers tend to corroborate their claims. SMT007 Chart 4: Does your company have plans to implement a digital factory. A team from the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow in the U.K. and ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland used their technique to observe how the magnetisation behaves—the first time this has been done in three dimensions. The technique, called time-resolved magnetic laminography, could be used to understand and control the behaviour of new types of magnets for next- generation data storage and processing. The results are reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Magnets are widely used in applications from data storage to energy production and sensors. To understand why magnets behave the way they do, it is important to understand the structure of their magnetisation and how that structure reacts to changing currents or magnetic fields. Moving from two dimensions to three is highly complex, however. Modelling and visualising magnetic behaviour is relatively straightforward in two dimensions, but in three dimensions, the magnetisation can point in any direction and form patterns, which is what makes magnets so powerful. (Source: University of Cambridge) Watching Magnetic Nano 'Tornadoes' in 3D