Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1463464
14 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2022 Matties: Obviously there's a huge benefit by bringing the factory into that digital thread. Kelly: It's becoming a business—or a compet- itive—imperative. If North America wants to compete within commodity-based electronics manufacturing, it needs to be super productive and super-efficient. How do you do that? Fac- tory of the Future approaches can enable that if you do it right. Matties: Maybe digitized factory is a better term? e digitized factory gives you the com- petitive advantage, especially if you under- stand how to utilize that data. e data can be overwhelming if you let it. Skilled Workforce Matties: What about the workforce, Matt? Kelly: ere is a fear that we're taking away peo- ple's jobs. However, I don't really subscribe to that. I see it as a reduction in low value-add areas, but I would also look at it as making your engineer or operator able to look aer multiple parts of a process. Instead of having multiple supervisors—for example, a front- end supervisor for print and for placement and a back-end supervisor—there can now be one supervisor who can look aer the whole line. e idea is to give your workforce "superpowers." ey have all this data at their fingertips; they can see production levels, quality, and yield in real time. To me, it's an upscaling of your workforce, not an elimina- tion. Johnson: ere's a precedent in semiconductor as well. We're fabricating at around the same sorts of dimensions as semiconductor when they had to make changes in their manufactur- ing or lose profitability through low yields. Kelly: Essentially, you're right. We're adopting what the semiconductor industry has already been doing for many years now. Matties: Dave, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this subject matter. Dave Hillman: Matt is exactly right. Some might feel that, if they bring in a machine, then there goes the workforce. Rather, why should a human being stuff a part into a board 500 times a day when a machine can do it? Put the peo- ple on something that a) a machine can't do, and b) actually requires a brain? Let's put the talent where the talent is needed. Repetitive tasks are what machines and robots are for. My colleague Tim Pearson used to work at a foundry that ran on statistical process control. at facility was hands off. In semiconduc- tor, they're using gases and materials that tend to cause death when people come into con- tact with them. It was 100% automated; the machines did all the work, and spit out acres of statistical control data, which the people then managed. Let the machines do what machines do best and let people to do what people do best. We're to that point in PCB assembly, too. I can take a machine, and I can put 5,000 resistors down on a board in two minutes. I don't need a per- son doing that work. e semiconductor guys are already there, they're utilizing data to drive processes, and the people are utilized where machines can't do things. Return on Investment Johnson: When you say, "We need to be more digital," who is that message going to? Kelly: ere are two main groups that I can see. One is the big multinational companies. ey work in the global supply chain right now, so they might be doing some of this in ailand, Singapore, etc. But then there are North Amer- ican manufacturers that might not be the multi- nationals. It might be a SME (small to medium enterprise) type of group. at's the dilemma: We must know exactly who we're sending the message to because objectives are different for a big company vs. a small one.