Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1315894
DECEMBER 2020 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 39 motivation behind it, as it's not really going to work if just one domain thinks it's a great idea, but the other doesn't. Designers, manufacturers, and all of the different components across the whole life cycle of the production-related business need to be on board and say, "I see the value of data. I want to be a part of this interoperability. My solution is much better now because it has interoper- ability," so they can realize the ben- efits. We use the technology that IPC has estab- lished with DPMX with CFX, together with the IPC Digital Twin, in particular, to enable collaboration in a way that benefits everyone without running into competitive issues. We saw this happen with CFX; all machine ven- dors, customers, and solution providers are benefiting, so we expect the same to happen elsewhere. Holden: The best way to drive this is going to be from the OEM perspective. The OEM is the big winner on this, which means that once they believe in it, they find their favorite soft- ware vendor who seems to be best capable of writing the software that's interoperable and collaborative and put that software together for them with the caveat that you can't release it to the market for at least a year. Ford: I completely agree with that. There are people out there who are already looking for this. The nice thing about working in the stan- dards organization within IPC is that you get to see the start of these things happen. The busi- ness owner of the product is at both ends of the business process; they're doing the product design, and they're also monitoring the prod- uct reliability in the market. They can see the whole picture, and for them to be driving this process is perfect. Holden: You finally reached the level of HP soft- ware 1998 because this is what we called Order Express version three, which did this all in X windows, things like that. Again, we never let Valor see it, so there was no way they could come up with a product, but it was all because of standardization. That was a vital part of our schematic to finish a prototype in five work- ing days, which we achieved in five and a half days. Ford: Exactly. That's a great result, and it shows that it can be done, even years ago. We have new tools now, making life easier, so we have no excuse. We're doing it on a slightly bigger scale, as we want the whole industry to get on board with it, but you've shown that it can be done. As we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other things going on in the world, we have to be on our A-game. We have to be ready to take the challenge of how we're going to expand and recover business and be differ- entiated and successful, and that's going to be based on very fast reaction times in both design and manufacturing, with the ability to quickly make strategic decisions. Johnson: That's a good point and begs the question, "How does a design team move this along?" because they're going to be a big bene- factor from this. Ford: It's interesting in the OEM world. When manufacturing is being done in-house, there is easy and direct feedback. You can change things and justify it based on the nature of the results that you expected to see for the prod- uct in the market. When you get into the EMS world, it's a little bit more difficult because you