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October 2016 • SMT Magazine 51 Peallat: Of course there is the labor cost, which is the clear short-term benefit, but you also have quality and reliability. When your process is set with robots or automation, it's very stable. When you rely on people you may introduce more de- fects. Justification is twofold. When you say high- er quality, it means less rework or less cost of non- quality. Also with total automation, you can man- ufacture everywhere with full flexibility of your assets. Las Marias: You mentioned quality and reliability. Before, people were not really into inspection equip- ment because according to them, they don't need it. Nowadays, because of quality and reliability issues, more and more manufacturers are really looking into installing inspection systems in their processes. Peallat: It's true. What we see now is that inspec- tion is going into every single step of the SMT line. Of course, most popular are solder paste in- spection and post-reflow inspection but now we have also pre-reflow. It means for one line now you have three points of inspection. Then you control your process at every single step. If you do that, the quality at the end is under control. Of course, the inspection changes as technology changes, so the quality of the inspection is also now getting higher and higher. Now, we are talking about zero defect lines. Clearly in a few months, maybe the next years, most of the assembly line will be almost free of op- erators. The inspection machines will talk to each other and will talk to other equipment. The con- trol loop will be fully automated. Inspection is get- ting more involved and in different locations. But, in order to achieve this, you need accuracy, and not just repeatability. This has always been our core advantage versus our competition for years. Las Marias: Not to mention that a lot of the products right now are getting smaller and smaller. Peallat: Yes, it's very difficult for a human visu- al inspection. When you have 0105s, it's already difficult; but you have components now that are four times smaller. You can't see it and you can- not repair it. That's the reason why you have to prevent it. Inspection used to be the goalkeeper at the end of the line. For years we were talking about preventing and preventing, but today it has become a must. You have to do it. Las Marias: At the end of the day, if failure happens, its cost is bigger than had you just invested in making sure that your line was top notch. Peallat: If you have an issue or a failure on your PCB, luckily you can maybe able to catch it at the end of the line and repair it, but then it's already a substantial cost. If some of the defects go to the consumer or end user, costs to repair are 10 times higher. I am not including all potential damages to the consumer himself or third party. This will become more and more critical with all the au - tomation in our lives. You can just imagine what can happen with a defective self-driving car. But this is also important on the consumer side, when you pay a few hundred dollars for your phone and it fails, that's a problem too. Even if you can get a replacement quickly, it has a cost for the man- ufacturer. The only way to prevent all these is to do the inspection after every single process step. That's key. Las Marias: As a final question, how do you see your industry developing over the next few years? Peallat: For inspection in SMT what we see is most of the inspection companies are doing all types of inspection. People who were just in the SPI busi - ness came to AOI and AOI companies went to SPI. Now, most of the players are offering the com- plete solution. Software will be more and more important, as well as the ability to use this infor- mation. Today, we have a 3D image of the solder paste process and we have a 3D image of the com- ponent. How do we use all this information? It's a lot of information, first of all. Secondly, it's also more and more difficult for the operator to ana- lyze this. Software will be key. Vi Technology is also working on the software side to develop tools that are usable by people, not only a PhD that an- alyzes data, but people on the line that can use and quickly interact with the assembly line. Las Marias: Great. Thank you very much for your time, Jean-Marc. Peallat: You're welcome. SMT INSPIRING OTHERS: THE KEY TO LEADERSHIP