EMS@C-LEVEL
As Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company and SCOOP writer, Philip Stoten, continues to talk to EMS (Electronic Manufacturing Services) executives he learns more about their individual and collective experiences and their expectations for their own businesses and for the entire electronic manufacturing industry.
EMS@C-LEVEL
Electronica 24: Revolutionizing Test Technology in PCBA and Semiconductor with Seica's Luca Corli
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Experience the cutting-edge world of test technology through the eyes of Luca Corli, Sales Director from SEICA. Discover how the electronics industry is pivoting from simply expanding capacity to enhancing capabilities with a sharp focus on quality, efficiency, and traceability in the post-COVID world. We reveal SEICA’s transformation journey from a traditional test company into a dynamic software and consultancy provider. With AI playing a pivotal role, learn how it’s reshaping testing processes by improving decision-making and test coverage, alongside SEICA’s innovative Pilot VX flying probe technology making waves in semiconductor testing. The convergence of PCB and semiconductor industries, especially in the electric vehicle realm, signals an exhilarating era of innovation and collaboration on the horizon.
In this captivating dialogue, we emphasize the importance of early customer collaboration in product design. Luca and I unpack the significance of engaging with clients at the concept stage, turning ideas scribbled on paper into successful products through early design for testing. This strategic partnership not only aligns with the customer's vision but often leads to superior outcomes.
Join us for an episode filled with insights and forward-thinking discussions that promise to inspire and inform.
EMS@C-Level at electronica 2024 was hosted by IPC (https://www.ipc.org/)
EMS@C-Level is hosted by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Global Electronics Association (https://www.electronics.org)
You can see video versions of all of the EMS@C-Level pods on our YouTube playlist.
Hello, I'm Philip Stoughton. I'm at Electronica 2024 and I'm joined by Luca from Seca. Great to see you, my friend. How have you been?
Speaker 2Great to see you again, Phil. Everything okay.
Speaker 1Yeah, and it's nice to be back at Electronica post-COVID. It feels like the first really kind of full energy show, doesn't it?
Speaker 2Yes, it's nice and it's encouraging, because the first day was over our expectations, so also here today. We had so many visits, it's promising.
Speaker 1What are people looking for? Because what we're seeing and hearing is not so much an investment in capacity, because there's a sense that there's a little bit of overcapacity in the market, but investments in capability, technology, anything that can drive quality, efficiency, traceability, traceability, exactly yes you know, the show is more and more uh, kind of meeting room where you meet your existing customers to discuss about ongoing projects.
Speaker 2Demanded is the ability to track what you are doing. Get all the data of what you are doing. Of course we are a test company, we are doing measurements and the measurement is the core of our business. But I would say that people today are accepting the state of the art of the test and they want to know what else the tester can do other than test. So we talk about connection with MES systems, connections to the cloud, all this stuff to the cloud, all this stuff, and a test company as SEICA is becoming more and more also a software company or a consultant company of our customers, because around the tester there is a world. There is a world to connect the tester physically to other equipments, but there is a world to connect the tester to the world of ERP systems, mes, et cetera, et cetera. Ai is another very popular word. Yeah, you know, in terms of AI, today we call AI something that we have done years ago.
Speaker 1Now it's called AI.
Speaker 2Machine learning, machine taking decisions, something very easy. For example, in tests, a machine can easily decide to increase or decrease the test coverage on a board, depending on the fault rate. Today this is called AI and it's something that we have already done. And, of course, there is new hardware, there are new algorithms, something more smart, smart ways to do this, but it's something that is more and more demanded by our customers and by their customers.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I think it's the idea of initially, when you start that test process, what you're trying to do is you're trying to avoid escapes from the factory, false calls, and you're trying to reduce false calls, and you're trying to get to a position where you can say, yes, this is good, no, this is bad. But when you look into the data and you look into everything you're building around, that there's so much more value, isn't there? There's so much more value around process control and other areas.
Speaker 2Obviously, the secret is to extract from a big amount of data, you know, the few good information that you need to make a step ahead and to improve yes so tell me how you're doing that and the kind of applications that's being used.
Speaker 2In fact, our process is in some ways a step back from the board test. We move a few years ago into the pcb test and now we're looking to the semiconductor test. Okay, we're still a test company, but there are today there are devices that are complex, like boards in the past. So the test of a single device becomes complex as the test of a board. So SEKA has two booths in this show. There is one in the Semicon area where we present a specific solution for wafer test. So the wafer for some reason looks like a board. Yeah, it contains a lot of complex objects, a lot of connectivity, and our flying probe technology is now deployed also for wafer tests, not only boards. Of course, you must be very accurate.
Speaker 2Very gentle, very gentle, very delicate when you touch the object, something that we know how to do. We started in the Probe Card business. Probe Cards are the object that are used to test the digital device on the semiconductor testers. We have several customers in this area since many years and thanks to the experience we have got on soft touch on doing some specific measurement or very, very small values capacitance, resistance, etc. We developed an application for our Pilot VX flying probe dedicated to wafer test. But this is just the first step into the semiconductor market. We have something that we can display in our booth doing tests of our semiconductors. We'll probably introduce the final solution next year. Here we have a concept. We're looking to some parameters, and a simple parameter that many producers of power semiconductor need to measure is the thermal resistance between the semiconductor, the transistor, let's say, and the heat sink. Yeah, power electronics got a big push from the electric vehicles.
Speaker 2So all of these power devices? Of course they dissipate a lot of heat and the connection between the device and the heat sink become really important, really critical. The measurement of the thermal resistance between the component and the heat sink is a parameter that we can measure.
Speaker 1With another SACRE solution coming out on the market, Okay, exciting stuff, one of the things I'm curious about. And you have the two booths. It's interesting that it was only maybe four years ago that these shows started to merge. Those industries are starting to get connected, aren't they? We're seeing the PCB players play in the back-end semiconductor space, the semiconductor industry showing increasing interest in EMS and OSAP. There's a lot of connections?
Speaker 2Yes, there are, and part of the reason is what I said at the beginning. Some boards from five years ago now are just one component, some bare boards. They contain silicon. There are embedded components into the PCB, so there is really a merge, there's a blurring of layers. Yes, there is a merge, and a board can become a single device or a PCB can become a PCBA. Our flying prop technology is looking to move to the parameters that are typical from a semiconductor, not typical for a normal electronic board. We try to put all of this power into the same tool because nobody wants to make fixtures yeah products are changing too fast.
Speaker 2Yeah, there is no time. There is no roi, basically for physical fixtures. When you have a product still in the early phase, still changing, yeah, volumes are not there.
Early Customer Collaboration in Product Design
Speaker 1So you need something that quickly will give you a response and the flying probe is perfect for that, absolutely, it makes perfect sense and I do think that you know that blurring in lines and you being able to keep up with that because you listen to the voice of your customer you respond to what they want. You deliver products and solutions that actually not just solve that problem but go beyond and help them with that process.
Speaker 2Phil, what happens today more and more, is that we meet our customers when they don't know their product.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2They just have an idea in mind. They have a concept.
Speaker 1They need help on design to understand how to test it.
Speaker 2So we start when there is nothing on the table, just papers or ideas in the brain.
Speaker 1Yeah, and my sense is that the earlier you start with them, the better the outcome will be.
Speaker 2Of course, I think that makes sense.
Speaker 1Luca, pleasure to chat. Thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 2It was a pleasure for me.
Speaker 1Enjoy the rest of your time. Same to you, bye-bye.