-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- pcb007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueThe Growing Industry
In this issue of PCB007 Magazine, we talk with leading economic experts, advocacy specialists in Washington, D.C., and PCB company leadership to get a well-rounded picture of what’s happening in the industry today. Don’t miss it.
The Sustainability Issue
Sustainability is one of the most widely used terms in business today, especially for electronics and manufacturing but what does it mean to you? We explore the environmental, business, and economic impacts.
The Fabricator’s Guide to IPC APEX EXPO
This issue previews many of the important events taking place at this year's show and highlights some changes and opportunities. So, buckle up. We are counting down to IPC APEX EXPO 2024.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - pcb007 Magazine
Amitron's Leap Into the AI Frontier
December 12, 2023 | Nolan Johnson, PCB007Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
In a conversation with Aidan Salvi, Amitron’s chief transformation officer, he spoke of the interaction of machine learning on registration. Amitron has been modernizing much of its manufacturing equipment, and Aidan points out that improving registration is a key objective. He sees registration as a holistic system. To make smart improvements, you need data. To get data, you need equipment and sensors which capture the data. To make sense of the data, you need analysis and, eventually, predictive tools.
Nolan Johnson: Aidan, you’re leading a transformation at Amitron, and you’ve shared that registration improvement is one of the objectives of your modernization. Where do you see machine learning and AI contributing?
Aidan Salvi: There are steps to making AI impactful. It all starts with gathering the data. We operate our process with nearly 60 different pieces of equipment that do different functions. When looking at what the future of AI could be, the biggest challenge is how we consolidate that data. How do we create standards? How do we create scalable hardware that can store and retrieve the data? This is a tremendous amount of data; companies need to look at their data infrastructure and assess how to integrate and pull it all together. That is the first hurdle I see for AI in the future.
Johnson: When it comes to bringing AI into the PCB factory, is this a hardware processing horsepower and data storage challenge, or maybe one with software tools or people and skills? Where do you start using machine learning and AI appropriately for registration?
Salvi: There are at least three things I see as the cornerstones of this challenge. First, it's integration with the equipment. You must deal with quite a few manufacturers to extract the necessary data out of the equipment in a consistent way, and that doesn't exist in our industry as well as it could. Second, it's not necessarily computing horsepower, but more of an infrastructure design issue. We're dealing with quite a bit of real-time data that needs to be transported over networks, stored, and processed. In other words, it’s designing infrastructure that can handle the future needs of AI computing. The last piece is cloud integration, where much of AI is built. That starts moving us away from the physical component, and into looking at how we can start processing the data at scale and building data systems in a virtual cloud architecture. These are challenging things to put in place because of the overall cost and knowledge gaps that exist.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the November 2023 issue of PCB007 Magazine, click here.
Suggested Items
Koh Young Showcases Award-winning Inspection Solutions at SMTconnect with SmartRep in Hall 4A.225
04/25/2024 | Koh Young TechnologyKoh Young Technology, the industry leader in True 3D measurement-based inspection solutions, will showcase an array of award-winning inspection and measurement solutions at SMTconnect alongside its sales partner, SmartRep, in booth 4A.225 at NürnbergMesse from June 11-13, 2023. The following offers a glimpse into what Koh Young will present at the tradeshow:
Book Excerpt: The Printed Circuit Assembler’s Guide to... Factory Analytics
04/24/2024 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamIn our fast-changing, deeply competitive, and margin-tight industry, factory analytics can be the key to unlocking untapped improvements to guarantee a thriving business. On top of that, electronics manufacturers are facing a tremendous burden to do more with less. If you don't already have a copy of this book, what follows is an excerpt from the introduction chapter of 'The Printed Circuit Assembler’s Guide to... Factory Analytics: Unlocking Efficiency Through Data Insights' to whet your appetite.
Real Time with... IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Industrial Quality Solutions from Zeiss
04/23/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPOEditor Nolan Johnson and Herminso Gomez of Zeiss Group discuss the company's industrial quality solutions, with a focus on X-ray technology. Zeiss provides a range of microscopy options and Herminso highlights the advantages of X-ray technology for aerospace, medical, and consumer electronics sectors.
Altair Acquires Cambridge Semantics, Powering Next-Generation Enterprise Data Fabrics and Generative AI
04/22/2024 | AltairAltair a global leader in computational intelligence, acquired Cambridge Semantics, a modern data fabric provider and creator of one of the industry’s leading analytical graph databases.
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
04/19/2024 | Marcy LaRont, PCB007 MagazineFor my must-read picks of the week, I’m highlighting Parker Capers, a young professional seeking employment, solid counsel from Dan Beaulieu on what your post-show plan should look like, more information and insight on “chiplets” and the need for secure data transfer standards from columnist Preeya Kuray, as well as Matt Stevenson’s design for reality wisdom. It’s a reminder to download one of our newest books (there are several) you don't want to miss if you are an assembler.