Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1189040
54 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2019 travel is upon us, the world will have made a fundamental change. It strikes me that that's good for cleaning companies. It's a value chain option that's going to be a big deal. Matties: My point is I think it's probably already there. Forsythe: It's coming, and there are opportu- nities there. Right now, that's a small part of the industry. We expect it to grow, but those are big changes for the automotive industry because they're a generation in to not worry about cleaning. Therefore, the young engineers from 20 years ago are the senior people that know everything that they are teaching peo- ple, but they don't know anything about clean- ing because cleaning was abandoned. They weren't taught about cleaning. There is a gap because it has been so long, which is one of the reasons why KYZEN is very active in the education system. We're big on giving papers at SMTA events and IPC events as well as different technical forums all around the world. We're saying, "Here's the science that's going on. You may be seeing some of these challenges, and here are the solutions that add value and resolve those." It's like the movie "Yesterday," about the guy who wakes up and no one else has heard of the Beatles. If you woke up and didn't know what elec- tronic cleaning was, how would you know that it could solve your problem? Matties: That's a great point. I hadn't considered what you just said. We have a generation of people that did not grow up on cleaning. Forsythe: It's incumbent on us and others in the industry to write the papers, give presenta- tions, and educate people to help them fill those gaps. We've done that all along. It has always been a part of our program in a very aggressive way. Our chief tech- nology officer, Dr. Mike Bixen- man, is always speaking because he's always on the program someplace. You need to explain what's going on because it's not black magic; it's science, and science makes sense. You can have proprietary solutions and science. That's what we try to do. Matties: What advice would you give a young engineer who's coming into a field where cleaning hasn't been a standard practice? Forsythe: It depends where they are on the food chain. If they're making consumer electron- ics, they probably have time. But in automo- tive, it's time to learn. If they're in aerospace or medical, they're going to learn. And the people to learn from are nearby because those people never left. Cleaning is one of the tools. What do engineers bring to an operation? They bring tools to resolve challenges that present them- selves because the assembly process has a mil- lion inputs and one output. When everybody's SPC curve leans a little high, usually, there's an issue because the whole concept isn't based on everything leaning the same way. That's why ships tip over. Cleaning is one of those tools that they can benefit from, just like a vast array of other things, such as understanding reflow, printing, and processes that they deal with every day. That's how you can resolve challenges when things go bump in the night. Matties: And sometimes, when it relates to cleaning, the ill effect of a dirty board, if you