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14 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2025 F E AT U R E I N T E RV I E W by N o l a n J o h n s o n , I - C o n n e c t 0 07 Is Material Handling the Last Frontier of Automation? In this conversation with David Ly, technical sales manager at Inovaxe, the spotlight falls on one of EMS manufacturing's most overlooked bottlenecks: material handling. While factories invest heavily in line automation, David argues that true efficiency gains come from automating the transactional data and traceability behind every reel—not just moving parts around. From image-driven receiving to pick-to-light smart racks, he demonstrates how EMS companies can reduce labor, eliminate errors, and achieve near- continuous uptime—often with ROI measured in months, not years. David, material handling is the heartbeat of the floor. If the assembly line is a money printer, don't you have to feed it with paper? David Ly: Exactly, you would need to provide it with paper, ink, and all the goods needed to produce. The way things are currently being done today in terms of automation means there's not a whole lot of it. People are focused on optimizing the production line itself, meaning the compo- nents per hour, inspection, reliability, and accu- racy, from SSBI to pre- and post-oven AOIs. The process of the materials has been neglected— even bringing material from receiving into a facility is inefficient with our current methods. I assume you mean the current manual methods. Can you describe the process? By that, I mean people are manually looking at barcodes, entering information into an ERP sys- tem, and applying labels. It only gets worse from Image credit: Frank Hübler