Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1532533
102 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2025 it's a bit more complicated as there may be legal requirements. For example, if there is a hazardous variable, i.e., certain chemicals used, or it's being used for the military, it requires additional informa- tion and lets the manufacturer know whether special handling is required. is can be included in the product declaration. If there's a problem in the field, it can be tracked back, even identifying the lot from which it came to track other potentially bad components. at would be important in, for example, the auto- motive industry if there's a recall. ere are bil- lions of these declarations out in the world sit- ting somewhere in a database. That is a lot of data to mine through. Another one is IPC-1782, which originally started with different levels of traceability and covers the supply chain. During the pandemic, there were disruptions to supply chains and sometimes even known quality compo- nents suppliers didn't have enough capacity to fulfill a certain order. ey took components from partner suppliers, which for some products and manufacturers was okay; but it wasn't okay for others. It became a violation of the contract. Sometimes a different vendor may not meet the quality requirements for a certain product, especially for medical, automotive, and military applications. What about IPC-1783 that's meant for reporting data collection and reporting for sustainability? Yes, that one is brand new. ere are a couple of new standards in Europe: digital product passports and sustainability standards. ere are three scopes that require certain data from production. So, how can this data be retrieved from production? We are specifying a standard approach, a pro- cedure for how to get this data, which will pro- vide the databases to fulfill the legal require- ments for digital product passports and report- ing to governments, whatever it may be. Today, this is difficult and requires a lot of effort, because every manufacturer develops this inde- pendently. ere's a costly audit certification before the manufacturer can publish this data. Our objective is to provide this defined standard on how to collect this data that will simplify the audit and make it less costly. What about cybersecurity and digital informa- tion exchange, a standard still being defined? Cybersecurity is about handling security inci- dents. What if you discover a breach in your security? How do you stop and recover? We have IPC-1792 to help with this. IPC-2591, Connected Factory Exchange, is at the heart of this. We will begin working on IPC-2592, Digital Cre- dential Exchange (DCX), this year. is standard is about reporting to poten- tially different stakehold- ers who may need com- pletely different data. It can be done with a digital credential exchange. e information is encrypted, and then, based on the access permission, the different stakeholders can see the different lev- els of data details they specifically need. That is next-level and, quite frankly, some- thing we have just gotten to recently When talking about data, until about five years ago, there was a long-used SMEMA standard, which is also an IPC standard, but it was lim- ited. It was really about a couple of cables and electrical signals that took care of handing PCBs over. At that point, all data was lost. It could no longer be used by the SMT machines. ey basically had to start over. e idea behind the Hermes standard is that certain data, such as which products are being built, the board's physical dimensions, or any- " What if you discover a breach in your security? How do you stop and recover? We have IPC- 1792 to help with this. "