Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1161956
SEPTEMBER 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 23 ible with each other. The terms and definitions are pretty close. And the people who we've presented this to understand it. They think it's amazing and should be pursued. In one year's time, we're going to be doing this. Shaughnessy: Do you think it will take off? Ford: The benefits are there. We see the kind of turmoil going on in the world now where people need to do local, flexible manufactur- ing. They're losing sight and control of what they need to make day by day. They need digi- tal solutions to be able to do that, but you can't afford to buy those solutions from 20 different vendors, and they're all incompatible. People are realizing that it's standards first, but don't take five years on it. Do it within the next few months. Let's get a handle on what we need to do because we need to get this value into man- ufacturing that's going to seize the maximum opportunity and get the most profit from all of the necessary relocations or reconfigurations of what they are going to go through. Shaughnessy: This won't change the way a designer does their job, right? Carter: It will give them a lot more visibil- ity about what is going on with their product when it hits the factory floor. you think you make it according to the design? No. People will come along and say, "Making one phone is not going to be very practical. We're going to put it on a board and make 16 of them at the same time. And we can't buy the material that you specified in the design in China, so we're going to buy something else." Does that mean it's the same size, footprint, or quality? Not necessarily. Then, you end up with phones in the market that have issues. Nobody knows if it was due to the design, materials, the change in manufacturing, etc. Now, you could find out. With traceability data, in the past, you didn't want to capture anything beyond what was immediately specified for a specific need, because it cost you money; now, it's free because you're getting the data through CFX. The IPC-1782 traceability standard lays out where all of the data will come from, which can then even go back into your design tool to statistically analyze opportunities to improve the decisions you make for manufacturing. Shaughnessy: Are you in beta with this? Ford: Many companies are starting to work with this idea, but we're in the early stages of putting this together. We want to be sure that the standard itself is clearly defined because IPC is consensus-based. Many companies in the industry are already interested in this and want to make sure that we satisfy everybody's needs, so that's step one. Shaughnessy: Are there any other hurdles you see ahead? Just organizing it seems like the biggest thing. Carter: There are a few standards we would like to create a schema structure around so that we can eliminate that last group of notes that requires some sort of human interpreta- tion and re-entry downstream. But beyond that, I don't think we have any big challenges from a technical perspective. Ford: All of the standards have been developed using IPC guidelines, so they are quite compat- Michael Ford