Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/734166
50 SMT Magazine • October 2016 that you cannot rely only on your degree earned at the university. People will have to be continu- ously trained. The leader should explain this to encourage people, and not only the youngest, to acquire new skills. Las Marias: Jean-Marc, what do you think the of- fice or the shop floor will look like 10–20 years from now? Peallat: With mobile technology, I think people are now working from almost anywhere. We al- ready started to see that trend. With cloud tech- nologies, the company is virtually everywhere and can be accessed as long as you have a connec- tion. The new generation, as I mentioned earli- er, are more freelancer type of worker. They want to balance life and work. I believe that the office will be a very small space where people meet and we will see less and less big buildings with a lot of cubicles. I think that will be over. When you look at the startups, you see offices with a very casual atmosphere where people work on their own and it's very simple and informal. Even big corporations are trying to move away from this scheme, their organization is changing to intro - duce smaller cells with higher energy level to en- hance the activity. I think business will get away from this for- mal, strict environment because the younger generations expect that. Millennials want to bal- ance their life and do not want work to be their focus. It means they want to be able to mix work sessions with personal life sessions and break the cycle of commute- work-commute-sleep. When I look at my kids today, they are working on a few proj - ects with different companies, they are able to change quick- ly from one project to the other, from one company's culture to another one. They manage their time. I think that mode doesn't fit a square cubicle. I see it being very open: no more cubicles, small spaces dedicated to meetings. People will work outside of the office, may be 10,000 kilometers away, from their home or remote places. They will come back physically or virtually to share their work, to meet teams and will go away again. Las Marias: What can you say about NEPCON this year? Peallat: It was a very good show. I was surprised by the number of visitors. Of course, on our side, we had our new 3D AOI, so we got a lot of at - tention. Vi TECHNOLOGY with 20 years' expe- rience in 2D AOI is one of the few companies that can provide really good and pragmatic 3D AOI solutions. There is no good 3D AOI without best in class 2D AOI. We are seeing a consolida- tion of the different areas of inspection. Industry 4.0 is now everywhere. We talk about productiv- ity, line efficiency and process control. This fu- ture requires more intelligence along the manu- facturing lines which cannot be answered with MES software. In China now, we see tremendous efforts to reduce the workforce as costs are get- ting higher and higher. We are going through the same path than Europe or Americas 15 years ago. The main difference is that technology al- lows more automation today at all stages. On our side, we need to provide our customers with more accurate systems, this is key for automa- tion, with more software solutions to help them. Automation is big. We see automation every- where. A lot of robotic companies are here. I was surprised also by the number of local companies. Shenzhen has changed quite a lot where 5–10 years ago it was mainly Western or an external company com- ing to China. Now I would say two-thirds of the companies are local Chinese companies. That's the way that business has evolved here. Las Marias: Automation is one of the real hot topics nowadays, but automating your production line involves a lot of investment. How would companies justify investing in automated lines or advanced lines? INSPIRING OTHERS: THE KEY TO LEADERSHIP