Nolan Johnson speaks with Frank Medina and Jeff Timms about the fruitful collaboration between ASMPT and Technica and the upcoming launch of a machine with enhanced capabilities. They also discuss partnerships with semiconductor firms, customer demo plans, and the significance of the demo center. The conversation highlights the potential in North America.

When I started working on global sourcing for American Standard Circuits, a friend sent me a book by the NY Times economist Thomas Friedman called The Lexis and the Olive Tree. Well, not being a fan of the NYT or even economists as a whole, I put the book on a shelf and forgot about it until I got a call from my book-giving friend, and he asked me what I thought of the book. I mumbled something unintelligible and quickly changed the subject.

Editor Marcy LaRont speaks with Bert Horner, president of The Test Connection, about the importance of strategic planning and design-for-test (DFT). Bert touches on some common mistakes that occur when DFT is not adequately considered early on. The discussion outlines an overarching industry need for a culture shift toward increasingly higher levels of integration and collaboration. Bert mentions that AI now has an influence on testing, as everywhere else, and announces his forthcoming book.

How fast do things move in the world of data analytics? Here’s an example. We’ve been planning this issue on artificial intelligence for the past few months, and, in fact, I had already written this column about a month ago. Then I went to IPC APEX EXPO and upended it all. I originally had compared AI to drag racing in that (CPU) horsepower and new (data) vehicles have steadily delivered higher performance competition. That seemed pretty accurate given how generative AI models dominated the popular media with amazing results—and sometimes spectacular crashes.