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18 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2022 A n u p d a t e d I P C Non-Commercialism Policy was strictly adhered to during this pro- cess, ensuring that the conference's technical presentations are truly "generic" in their tech- nical data. Welzel shared, "An updated, com- prehensive non-commercialism policy pro- vided full transparency on this sensitive matter for both contributors and the reviewers from the Technical Program Committee, thereby avoiding misunderstandings and ambiguities." Ultimately, the 70+ papers making up the 2023 IPC APEX EXPO Technical Conference represent the highest quality technical con- tent from authors around the world. e TPC members are very excited about the upcoming presentations, which are organized into topical tracks. "e combination of a broad coverage of dif- ferent topics related to electronics assembly technology, along with the high level of tech- nical depth and detail in these presentations, provides a comprehensive overview of the cur- rent hot topics, challenges, and solutions. is combination of 'breadth' and 'depth' is quite unique and will attract many attendees as well as contributors," said Welzel. Rak said, "e 2023 Technical Conference will introduce two new technical sessions on 'High Reliability for Extreme Environments,' which is exciting for individuals working on Class 3 electronics applications. e 2023 Technical Conference has approximately 12 papers that have direct relevance to the automotive electronics space, e.g., design, test, reliability, simulation, and assembly. Many of the authors are highly regarded industry experts in addition to some newcomers. e presentations are of high interest to me since I am active in the field." Welzel is looking forward to learning from the conference presentations. He added, "Printed boards are now expected to operate in harsher and harsher environments. Being responsible for PCB technology development for automotive electronics, I am looking forward to those papers dealing with the quality and reliability of advanced printed boards, especially on topics like microvia quality and reliability." e 2023 conference features five tracks on Tuesday and Wednesday, including: • Factory of the Future and Future Technologies • PCB Fabrication and Materials • Quality, Reliability, Test, and Inspection • Assembly and Materials • High-Density Interconnects and Microvias e diversity of the presenting authors is also impressive; 18 countries are represented by presenting authors. Fieen authors are next generation (five years or less in the indus- try), and 27 presenting authors hold doctoral degrees. "From the perspective of a long-time TPC member, I can say that this year has been by far the most organized and efficient IPC APEX EXPO planning process cycle I've participated in," said Todd MacFadden, technology development engineer at Bose. "is year, the committee used new tools and procedures to review and evaluate the technical submissions, and those tools were highly effective at ensuring consistent review metrics, facilitating edits, and tracking review progress. At the same time, authors were given better, clearer guidance than in previous years regarding paper format and expectations on content. As a direct result of these changes, the quality of the submissions is higher and