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20 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2022 for new engineers. As the industry continues to move toward the Factory of the Future, there will be many opportunities for us to cre- ate new courses that serve the needs of our members. Kelly: e number of people retiring and leav- ing is essentially the Baby Boomer population. is is the main cause of attrition for this skill set. So, it's important that we focus on the next generation of technologists and identify new ways of working with new technologies. Mitchell: Where does Europe focus on the Fac- tory of the Future or smart factory? Kelly: Europe is focused on the implementation and execution of new technologies for smart factories. ere is a trend toward digitization, using IPC-CFX to implement change. ere is an eagerness to show others what they are doing and how they are implementing change. Huprikar: A big part of modernizing and trans- forming factories is leveraging data to make better decisions. As Matt said, CFX is a big part of that, but in general, we have observed that European companies are laser-focused on managing and analyzing big data. Kelly: ere's a hierarchy of technologies. Let me give you an example. Everybody loves to talk about artificial intelligence, machine learn- ing, and digital twin. ese are all great con- cepts, but there are prerequisites that you must have in place before you implement them. You can't just say, "Let's go do AI or let's go do dig- ital twin." ose cool shiny object types are great ideas that will start to take hold, but you can't do it without data and digitization, and Europe has figured that out. And that is why you see smart factory and advanced manufac- turing being led by Europe. Mitchell: Tell us about growth in IPC Europe. Huprikar: e good news is Europeans want us to do more. ere are plenty of exciting oppor- tunities to expand our collaborations in stan- dards, education, and advocacy. To that end, we are hiring more staff this year to support the industry. PCB007 Dr. John Mitchell is president and CEO of IPC. To read past columns or contact him, click here.