Returning to a focus on soft skills will help industry find responsible employees.

For well over a decade, the number one question, complaint and concern I hear from businesspersons, regardless of industry or company size is: "Where is industry – any and every industry – going to find all the people necessary to actually build stuff?" And yet despite this serious workforce void, businesses continue to plan on a combination of reshoring product from distant lands or growing organically – which requires expanding their workforce. But how can you expand your manufacturing when the most critical ingredient – employees – is nowhere to be found?

Academia, from the earliest contact in elementary school to high school and right through university, has become misaligned with the real-world skills and education needed for a balanced and thriving economy. Yes, society needs doctors, lawyers, engineers and other more academically focused professions, but society also needs people with the interest and skill to touch and build product. In addition, there are real skills, education and training that together enable a worker to operate the complex and simple machinery and processes that successfully produce a multitude of technologically advanced, viable and sought after products. Maybe it is time to recalibrate our focus to some of the traits and skills that lead to success regardless of profession but appear to be currently missing in the workforce.

Quality management systems will not work without engaged personnel.

It was just a few bolts. What could possibly go wrong?

In industry, but especially in the electronics industry, nothing has changed more over the past several decades than the concept and implementation of quality management. In the early 1980s it was inspect, inspect and inspect again. In the late 1980s and through much of the 1990s, the concept of Total Quality Management, or TQM, became the rage. Manage the process and involve all the shop floor employees and stakeholders and better quality will result – requiring less inspection.

During the 1990s and continuing into the new millennium, TQM became overshadowed by Six Sigma. Applying Six Sigma, including certifying employees as green or black belts, enabled greatly improved quality. To be Six Sigma meant 3.4 (or less) defects per 1 million parts. Achieving this level was impressive for sure.

Making a board producible is entirely in your hands.

The goal of a good documentation package is that it is complete and coherent enough to proceed with the job without any explanations, waivers, errata or feedback of any kind. It doesn't always work that way, particularly when more than one vendor is involved. The fab drawing is more of a baseline from which they will all deviate to one degree or another. Even using the same vendor all the time is no guarantee that the DfM data come back immaculate.

The foundational aspect of PCB fabrication is a plausible phototool. That final imagery is derived from the artwork that you sent their way. What we know as global micro editing is where the phototool is crafted from the ECAD data. The artwork is more like a starting point.

Etch compensation – pre-distorting the artwork.The first item on the CAM operator's list is dealing with etch compensation. The traces and other geometry that appear on the board are what's left behind after the etch process. First, they must drill and plate the holes with copper. That's done prior to etching and adds a measure of copper to the entire panel. Only then do they mask off the circuit pattern that is not to be removed.

Connecting the world will require a better energy solution.

The early stages of the IoT "hype curve" saw some wild predictions for the number of devices that would be deployed. They're not looking so wild now, with 15 billion devices in 2020 and 29 billion expected by 2030. About 60% of these will be consumer devices, the remainder industrial, or IIoT, devices including smart meters and sensors for monitoring automation equipment, transportation infrastructures, and buildings like offices and factories.

Knowing that IPv6's 128-bit address space would permit more than 100 IP addresses for each atom on the surface of the earth, we can see that the IoT could theoretically grow well beyond even the most ambitious predictions.

While we can solve many problems by adding more of these devices, we are creating another at the same time. Each one needs a source of energy to operate and the fact that many of them will be deployed in mobile or remote locations means a battery is the most obvious power source. Already, the US alone throws away about 3 billion batteries every year and our IoT habit could add many extra tons of hazardous waste. But there are some exciting alternatives.