Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1339822
24 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2021 aren't presentations about pie- in-the-sky or what-if sorts of concepts. Our speakers will show at- tendees the capabilities that are available to them now so the electronics industry can begin to prepare for moving into Fac- tory of the Future implementa- tion. Johnson: For the prospective at- tendee, what are some of the key topics that I can expect to find in the technical papers and presentations? Kelly: We have three different tracks. We have Factory of the Future, which is our primary showcase track. Next, we have our PCB fab- rication and materials track, and third is our quality, reliability, assembly, and test track. Within Factory of the Future, you're going to see topics that span actual implementation on the shop floor. ere are presentations, for ex- ample, from the Manufacturing Technology Center, or MTC, out of England. ey'll be talking about their vision, their journey to en- abling smart factory for electronics manufac- turing, with topics like augmented and mixed reality within electronics manufacturing, and the role of automation and robotics. e con- tent just from MTC alone is very strong. We also have PSMA, the Power Sources Manufacturers Association, which we have partnered with in 2020, talking about power- ing the Internet of ings, mobile smart tech- nologies within the industry, and, my favorite, energy storage and energy harvesting within sensors. We then move into data analytics, which is very close to the work we've been doing with our CFX initiative. Here, we're focused on col- lecting data and making sense of it, so we have folks from Arch Systems, ASM, and Flex, for example, talking about predictive features of data for placement feeder main- tenance. We have a second data analytics and mining ses- sion where we've invited differ- ent OEMs and an MES provid- er. We have presentations from Honeywell FM&T, IBM, and Critical Manufacturing, an MES provider. In this session, we'll be talking about mining and re- fining dark data, modern MES solutions, and building the case for an electronics supply chain blockchain. It goes on and on and on; there's a lot of new con- tent here. I'm not even halfway through the list. Chris, could you talk a little bit about cybersecurity and traceability? Jorgensen: Cybersecurity is of major impor- tance right now to our industry. We have built two very solid sessions on cybersecurity that will provide an understanding of cybersecuri- ty risks, how to assess cybersecurity prepared- ness, as well as regulatory issues that affect our industry, such as CMMC. ese speakers bring decades of knowledge about cybersecurity for electronics manufacture, so all of these talks will be direct fits for our attendees. We'll also have a session on best practices for traceability, which will be led by the chairs of an IPC task group that oversees IPC-1782, our traceability standard. is session will provide a framework for how any company in the supply chain can assess their existing traceability capabilities and make plans to im- prove them to meet internal and external ex- pectations, as well as the immediate and long- term benefits of adopting the traceability best practices. We also have a session on digital twin, which is based on IPC-2551, the first industry stan- dard we know of on digital twin for the elec- tronics manufacturing industry. is session will provide an overview of the IPC Digital Twin and how to assess your company's dig- Matt Kelly