Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1467744
18 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2022 same product running repeatedly in order to baseline your quality system. Matties: Any final thoughts on this hot ROI topic? Perry: With respect to ROI, I liken it back to the days of the early legend inkjet print- ers. at was a difficult adoption to our indus- try because there was an art to screen printing legend. It was difficult to convince customers to look at an inkjet legend printer. We had to do tons of ROI justifications; it was always about the ROI. Even aer showing the ROI, custom- ers still wouldn't make the change. It took a long time until the industry adopted it. Now, I don't think anybody calculates the ROI to buy an inkjet legend printer. ey purchase it because they know it's the right thing to do. When you move that forward to direct imaging, the same thing happened. I think we'll see the same type of movement with inkjet printing, including resist, etch resist, and solder mask. ese three processes are going to make sense with direct application, but people still want to run the ROIs today. at ROI can be difficult, because you must include the speed of the process improvement, and the elimina- tion of multiple process steps. at's very dif- ficult to do in this environment; all the work that we process is in departmental batches. All these fabricators have been looking for space around the shop to add another process, increase the process flow, or add a new equip- ment. at makes it difficult. Carignan: e traditional view of ROI is van- ishing. Customers are demanding different forms. ey want cleaner factories, higher technologies, and information—back to the discussion of Industry 4.0. ey want infor- mation and they expect you to have it. If they want to quarantine a lot, or if they want finite traceability, it's going to be hard to do an ROI on that. Except, of course, to say, "We won't be selling to a lot of customers, because we don't have these capabilities." It's a lot like IT equipment. It's hard to do an ROI, if you have something that's working. How do you quantify the risk of losing data, or having a security breach? It's hard to justify spending that kind of money. But Technica Watch Wise automation.