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AUGUST 2020 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 17 "Ironman," and I'm not sure it would be for the best. Many domestic PCB manufacturers have been working to simply survive offshore com- petition, let alone have any time to think about making their factories smart. For those inter- ested and able to progress toward a smart fac- tory, the one-off very complex builds may not be conducive to over-automation. However, a traditional PCB factory can be increasingly automated over time, step by step—for example, the process of putting the solder mask and legend on the panel. Put a single unit in one end of a series of linked machines and processes, and a single board comes out the back end—single unit flow, a pillar of Lean manufacturing. This type of con- version is possible with traditional domestic factories like ours. Take 50 PCB independent manufacturing pro- cesses and start organizing them into subsets, automating them, and putting teams of people in charge of them. In world-class manufactur- ing terms, we call these responsibility centers. But we believe the idea of taking people com- pletely out of the equation is fundamentally flawed. Automation does not adapt easily or quickly when problems emerge in real-time. People can and do adapt to solving problems at the time and spot where they occur. Automation solves many problems with re- spect to product handling, leveling workflow, reducing errors, reducing human fatigue, and reducing cost, but it's the amalgamation of cognitive humans combined with automation technology that is going to make manufactur- ing processes that are robust, single-unit flow, lean, and adaptable. Matties: There are two sides to this: one is mov- ing the panel through the process with robotic arms and loaders and unloaders and such, but then there's the digital process control where you may have an inline AOI on your etcher, for example, to make real-time adjustments based on live input. Brassard: Many PCB shops already have feed- back loops in their manufacturing processes. One of the most common is layer-to-layer reg- istration, but this feedback loop is long. What you are describing is a short feedback loop within a set of connected and automated pro- cesses making decisions and processing tweaks in real-time. I agree that this is a very powerful approach to manufacturing, which does not re- quire massive amounts of systems integration within a factory. Rather, it's a subset of ma- chines that work together to continually tune a process while it's running. This becomes in- creasingly feasible the closer the steps are to- gether in time and space. We look forward to gaining access to these types of advanced tech- nologies that are indeed in our capital invest- ment roadmap. Nolan Johnson: Earlier in the conversation, you mentioned that, as you moved the engineers to the floor to respond to the need for produc- tion and the call for ventilators, your scrap rate went down. Automated panel handling on the production floor at Calumet.