Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1060280
32 PCB007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2018 with common interests together and work on it. We certainly want as many companies as possible to be able to use the format because that's the way that everyone will benefit. Matties: Is there anything that we haven't talk- ed about that you feel like visitors should know? Ford: One of the most important beneficiaries of CFX is manufacturers. In the committee so far, and we have a few actually, the most vocal people have been machine vendors and solu- tion providers because we understand the pain that's been gone through. When I say to peo- ple, "Guys, this will last interface that you will ever have to develop." They know that they're supporting 30–40 bespoken interfaces for cus- tomers that can now be just replaced by one. They get it, but I think we need to talk to man- ufacturers as well because it's the chicken and the egg scenario in terms of, "Do manufactur- ers want to use it, and will equipment vendors support it?" We're making headway with the machine vendors and manufacturers. A very large man- ufacturer in China has already come out and said they expect all of their equipment ven- dors to support CFX in the future. We need more people to do that. We need people to see the demonstration, ask questions, and come to us with their challenges: "Can CFX do this for me? Can CFX provide the data that I need here? Can I get the level of control?" Come along and see what those answers are. We can start to talk about the real benefits for manufactur - ing, and that pays for the whole thing. Manu- facturers will get the benefit from the data, the machine vendors will see the demand from the customer, and everything starts to work. It's really important that we start to get the ac- tual manufacturing customers involved in see- ing this demo. Bergman: There are a couple things I would like people to take away with from the show. We have a core group out of hundreds of people on the CFX committee. In our current commit- tee that we're managing from headquarters, there are over 250. Our IPC China team has a local committee also working on it at the same time, and there are around 100 people there. We have 350–400 individuals who are interest- ed in working on IPC CFX. There were a lot of messages written, and some individuals car- ried the lion's share of the work to get it to the point where it could start to take on a life of its own. The CFX messaging is done in an open- source software-development mode. We have proven that this can work. I'd like to see that catch fire. What I am trying to do is plant seeds that say, "Don't expect me to write all of this stuff for you. You want CFX to do cooler stuff, so you can help by writing a message." We had companies come in with a whole section of messages on sensors that we weren't expect- ing or it wasn't on our list. A guy came in and said, "This makes sense to me. I understand this. It doesn't look so hard. I'm going to write all these messages," and when he was done, everybody thought it was pretty darn good. We were able to add a new section with minimal modification. What I am starting to hear—particularly from some people that I've known for many years that are now in different job functions— is, "Dave, what's going on with CFX? Can it do this, this, and this?" I say, "Well, I don't know that I'm smart enough to know all of the an- swers to those questions, but I can point to where the messages are, and you can tell. If it doesn't, it means the message hasn't been written yet, so why don't you look at that if this is important for you and draft a message. You won't break anything." The development process is not going to al- low something to come in without some vet- ting. We have experts in the committee that spend a lot of time debating whether things make sense. They edit them, and we get com- ments on them. They won't be pulled in un- til they've gone through a vetting process. I would like this to get to the point where we