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2 4 C O M M U N I T Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 2 5 someone on the West Coast, it might be 6 a.m., while it's evening in Asia," Tom explains. "But people still show up, because they believe in the work." Interestingly, while most of the active development team is based in the U.S. and Europe, adoption has been strongest in Asia. The Shanghai office has cham- pioned CFX in China, and several companies in Asia have showcased the standard's capabilities in action. In the U.S. and Europe, it has gained more traction in the market and is now established as the standard of communication in EMS factories. "The funny thing is, sometimes my first connection with a company comes through sales discussions, and then I find out they're also part of our A-team," Tom says. "That's how these stories weave together." Evolution Through Collaboration From its launch at APEX EXPO 2019, CFX has grown through member-driven innovation. Version 1.0 focused on integrating machines with manufacturing execution systems (MES), reducing the costly custom work that integration once required. Later revisions expanded to include inspection data, predictive maintenance, and process optimization. Every six to nine months, the A-team publishes a new version. Each is backward-compatible, ensuring factories never lose functionality when upgrading. "That's one of the biggest strengths of CFX," Tom says. "It evolves with technology—AI, sustainability, robot- ics—without leaving anyone behind." The process is rarely dull. Members bring propos- als, debate their merits, and code solutions into the free software development kit (SDK) that underpins CFX adoption. Occasionally, disagreements flare. "Once, after months of discussion, another com- pany dropped in a code proposal that bypassed the process," he recalls. "The team was frustrated, but we worked it out. In the end, collaboration always wins." A Personal Journey Tom's Global Electronics Association journey began in 2015, when Michael Ford invited him to join a trace- ability committee. He was hooked. "Suddenly I wasn't just hearing from customers; I was hearing from the entire industry," Tom says. "That broader perspective was fascinating." From there, he helped launch CFX, driven partly by his background as an R&D manager. "It hurt to see my developers spending so much time on data transla- tion instead of building customer value," Tom says. Tom and Michael Ford were instrumental in forming the CFX standard.