Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1500520
60 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2023 is month, I am speaking with Ryan Gam- ble, CEO and founder of Intraratio, about the collection and analysis of big data. What are the common misconceptions, does artificial intelligence play a role, and what are some of the biggest mistakes for assembly companies when it comes to big data collection? Historically, the collection of data was associ- ated with a high price due to the cost of early memory chips. Technology has advanced to the point where memory is cheap, and most assembly process equipment can collect data. Now that we can collect large volumes of data (so-called "big data"), how can we make that data useful? Data Collection and Analysis Early in my career I recall analyzing test data in a binary file format called STDF, and wonder- ing why on earth you would painfully use 4 bits to represent a complex test result. Turns out this file format was created back in 1984, and it was a genius way of compressing data because of the high costs of memory at the time. With data now flowing freely from test and assembly equipment, it's not unusual to see gigabyte files generated just from a sin- gle test operation. e huge challenge now is that this data has no context in terms of cor- relating to any other equipment in the line, let alone inventory supplier data and other things critical to driving reliability, quality, and cost improvements. The Knowledge Base by Mike Konrad, SMTA