Agility + Collaboration + Technology: the key elements driving success for the electronics manufacturing industry in 2023

As we usher in this new year, I feel incredibly energized as I consider all the potential waiting to be seized. No guarantees it will be a smooth ride as the unpredictability of the global market and general sense of uncertainty within electronics manufacturing complicate our reality. And while these challenges seem daunting, I do believe this is our new normal and we must consider the appropriate adjustments to thrive.

For Cogiscan in 2023, thriving is about agility. Remaining close to our customers and partners so we can truly understand their evolving needs and ensure our portfolio solves real manufacturing problems. As collaboration is in Cogiscan’s DNA, it’s natural for us to establish trusted partnerships with our customers rather than a standard buyer-vendor model.

Through our participation in the Dürr Digital Factory and partnership with iTAC Software AG, we will continuously incorporate new technologies and strategies that will better enable our customers to quickly realize meaningful improvements in their factory digitalization goals.

The technologies available to electronic manufacturers today are incredible. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning systems are no longer for problems of the future, today we’re already seeing early adopters embracing specific use-cases to solve everyday manufacturing challenges and I only expect this adoption to increase throughout the year. Our AI-powered analytics solution in particular is helping manufacturers dramatically reduce their false call rate at AOI – a problem that continues to plague many PCBA manufacturers to bleed time and efficiency on the line.

This rapidly evolving technology will continue to revolutionize how electronics manufacturers operate – and those that fully embrace these technologies will certainly live the factory of the future we’ve all dreamed about for years. To that end, we’ll continue to invest in solutions that bring manufacturers closer and closer to an error-free production environment – and I am particularly excited about our next SMT use-case using ML algorithms to make error-rate predictions for pick and place machines and prescribe solutions to avoid them from happening.

Tune into any economic focused news outlet, and you’ll hear about the importance of “near-shoring” to better avoid the nightmare we all experienced last year due to COVID shutdowns and supply chain shortages. It’s clear that isolating manufacturing to a specific region is not always better and to remain agile in an unpredictable reality, we need to invest in a robust supply chain nearer to the source.

In our industry, much of the hype on the news continues to be focused on semiconductors, but that’s only one piece of the larger electronics manufacturing puzzle. I am encouraged to hear about major public and private billion dollar investments planned in the Americas, specifically US, Canada, and Mexico, to bring R&D, manufacturing, and infrastructure to our shores. North America is consuming 25% of electronics, but only manufacturing 12% of the semiconductors used in those devices and performing only 2% of the assembly. This must, and I believe will, change.

As we increase our share of manufacturing and assembly in the Americas, manufacturers will need to fully embrace automation and digitalization. Otherwise, the work will be too inefficient and too costly. As these investments become a reality and manufacturers look to bring the factory of the future to today, they will need partners like us to help them achieve their factory digitalization goals.

I can’t wait to see what we’ll achieve together.