Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1530610
DECEMBER 2024 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 27 down to the core parts that are going to be use- ful in the everyday running of the system. Was AI always a part of your product development? If we had talked about AI when we started 20 years ago, people would have looked at us like we were strange, but that's essentially what it is. We've got custom machine learning algo- rithms in there, bespoke designed for this pro- cess and finely tuned. You have your GX system, which is your groundbreaking solution for registration, and you have Xplain. How do they work together? Xplain is designed to give our customers a window into the data they've been collect- ing. While our algorithms are doing their work on the data, the customer might say, "I've got a particular core material. I want to see how that's been behaving over time in various con- structions." ey can go in and through a cus- tom rule set, pull out the data they want to look at, chart it over time, aggregate it, and apply it as they look for trends. It gives them a query ability. Yes. Xplain allows the customer to create a very tailored query using data from specific design factors. For instance, they can say, "Take X design that's already in there and find anything similar." It will trawl through and find that. You can refine how similar you want the informa- tion to be. You can say, "I want the core mate- rial to be exactly the same, but I'm not too wor- ried about the copper distribution or the pre- preg resin content." It will go through and find all the data that matches that criteria and then chart it out. These tools work together. Is there a scenario where a fabricator would not buy GX and Xplain together? ere is. It really comes down to how advanced the user is and the technology of the prod- ucts they manufacture when they purchase GX. Some people are just getting their heads around the registration process. It also comes down to the people in the industry. ere are a lot of older engineers in the industry, so they may be more likely to implement the systems in multiple steps to incrementally add to their experience. However, in many factories, that generation of engineers is gone, replaced by