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46 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2020 Digital Building Blocks The advancements in the development of digital building blocks (interconnected digital technologies) are providing digitization, inte- gration, and automation opportunities to real- ize smart manufacturing benefits. These tech- nologies will enable electronics manufacturing companies to stay relevant as the era of the dig- itally-connected smart infrastructure is devel- oped and deployed. Several technologies con- sidered fundamental digital building blocks are receiving increased attention in the electron- ics manufacturing industry (e.g., AI, ML, aug- mented reality, virtual reality, and digital twin). AI and ML AI and ML tools and algorithms can provide improvements in production yields and qual- ity. These tools and algorithms will enable the transformation of traditional processes and manufacturing platforms (processes, equip- ment, and tools). The situation analysis for AI and ML, as well as their enablers, typical- ly consider the following features and opera- tional specifications: communications at fixed frequency, commonality analysis, material and shipment history and traceability, models for predicting yield and performance, predefined image processing algorithms, secure gateway, warehouse management systems. AI and ML present several opportunities to aggregate data for the purpose of generating actionable insights into standard processes. These include, but are not limited to, the fol- lowing: 1. Preventive maintenance: Collecting historical data on machine performance to develop a baseline set of characteristics on optimal machine performance, and to identify anomalies as they occur. 2. Production forecasting: Leveraging trends over time on production output versus customer demand, to more accurately plan production cycles. 3. Quality control: Inspection applications can leverage many variants of ML to fine-tune ideal inspection criteria. Lever- aging deep learning, convolutional neural networks, and other methods can generate reliable inspection results, with little to no human intervention. 4. Communication: It is important for members of the electronics manufacturing industry to adopt open communication protocols and standards [5–8] . Digital Twin Technology The concept of real-time simulation is often referred to as the digital twin. Its full imple- mentation is expected to become a require- ment to remain cost-competitive in legacy and new facility types. Digital twin will initially be used to enable prediction capabilities for tools and process platforms that historically cause the largest and most impactful bottlenecks. The ultimate value of the digital twin will de- pend on its ability to continue to evolve by in- gesting data and the availability of data with the "5 Vs": veracity, variety, volume, velocity, and value. The situation analysis of the digital twin within and between electronics industry manufacturing segments highlight the follow- ing data considerations: historical, periodic, and reactive. The concept of a digital twin lends itself to on-demand access, monitoring and end-to- end visualization of production, and the prod- uct lifecycle. By simulating production floors, a factory will be able to assess attainable pro- jected KPIs (and what changes are required to attain them), forecast production outputs, and throughputs through a mix of cyber-phys- ical realities (the physical world to the virtual world, and back to the physical world), and ex- pedite the deployment of personnel and equip- ment to manufacturing floors worldwide. Enabling Smart Manufacturing Technologies (Horizontal Topics): Key Attribute Needs Security Security will continue to be a primary con- cern as the electronics manufacturing indus- try adopts technologies and tools that rely on ingested data to improve manufacturing qual- ity and yield and offer differentiated prod-