Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

A Conversation with... Marc Carter, IPC

I recently had the chance to sit down with IPC’s Marc Carter, director of technology transfer and editor of the latest version of IPC’s 2013 International Technology Roadmap. Full disclosure here: I received a preview review copy of the Roadmap and found it to be a fascinating document. This fact surprised me as I'm not a technical person, but even a profoundly dedicated, non-techie will find this important document quite interesting.

The Roadmap, of course, discusses technology, but, more importantly, looks toward the future--tomorrow’s line widths and spacing, trends, and products. I quickly came to the conclusion that the Roadmap is just as important to marketing specialists, strategists, and investors. This document is not only a technology roadmap, but also a roadmap leading to our industry’s future.

I spoke with Carter to learn more about how the Roadmap came together, the people involved, and the processes used in its creation.

Dan Beaulieu: Why this project, now?

Marc Carter: The IPC International Technology Roadmap, like any good, ongoing roadmap activity, is a “permanent” activity, continuously updated to reflect the changes in technology, market, and external influences as they may affect the targeted user. Our current plan calls for each "release," which is just a freeze-frame of an evolving body of information, early in each odd-numbered year. There is some discussion of increasing the frequency of these snapshots, or perhaps creating a limited-scope, or specific-topic update each year. In any case, with our greater emphasis on coordinating efforts with other roadmap organizations--ITRS, iNEMI, and others--for maximum benefit to the user, we may adjust the release dates so that information needed from ITRS and other “high overview” sources for iNEMI and IPC is available when needed.

Beaulieu: When was the last time IPC developed a new version of the Roadmap?

Carter: The last release, which was officially the 2011 release, was delayed until very early in 2012 for a variety of reasons, including our realization that our earlier work model was not keeping pace with the new realities imposed by industry changes. The 2013 release was completed in a record nine months through the really extraordinary levels of effort provided by volunteer participants.

Beaulieu: What role did you play in this project?

Carter: My function is as an IPC staff liaison or facilitator for the efforts of our member-teams as they gather, process, and coordinate the massive amounts of data needed to keep this information updated. I’m very grateful and humbled by the tremendous efforts and the breadth of knowledge and experience pooled in this project. Although, if you ask the participants, they may say that I drove them pretty hard. I have no specific recollection of the whip and chair some of them claim I threatened to use. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Seriously, though, we have an excellent chairman for this effort in John (Jack) Fisher, who has led this activity for many years, with extensive industry expert connections and a great perspective for this work. We share (with room for some discussion) a vision for the future direction of this work and complement each other’s strengths pretty well.

Beaulieu: How did you go about putting the document together?

Carter: Recognizing the changes in our constituency’s ability to travel, demands from many sources made on some key subject matter experts, and overall “leaner” operational staffing at our member companies, we began the transition to a more “distributed processing” model, We’d beta tested that approach in one segment of the 2011 release, and implemented it (almost) across the board in the 2013 effort.

Each major chapter had one or more leaders running their own team of experts and, with frequent coordination meetings and an overall structure guidelines, generated sections as best fitted their contributor’s schedules and methods. This ongoing , evolutionary process includes re-examining the methodology of data collection and generation of the Roadmap itself and we envision there will be one or more new approaches being tested and evaluated in a small segment of each successive Roadmap.

Beaulieu: How many people were involved?

Carter: On a day-in, day-out basis there was a core of at least 60 continuously active volunteers working on gathering information and each had their own network of sources and contributors. Some short-term contributors participated on a specific task or project, so the total volunteer involvement, including those who may have only contributed one data point, runs well into the hundreds. Many IPC staffers had roles to play as well. It really is a large-scale effort, though not very visible if you’re not involved.

That said, we encourage people with knowledge of the industry, or an interest in its future direction to get involved. We particularly are in need of more expert input from the automotive electronics design and fabrication areas, embedded technology fabrication experience, very high-volume Asian production experience, etc. By getting and staying involved, one gets the opportunity both to see the latest information, and to influence the course of the Roadmap development to insure that areas of particular interest to you and your employer get the consideration they deserve.

Beaulieu: What kind of logistics were involved?

Carter: As we touched on earlier, this was the first full-scale deployment of the independent individual chapter/segment team approach. Coupled with the realities of today’s world, with reduced travel budgets, and leaner pure-technologist staffing, several different distributed processing models were used by the teams, depending on the need, and the location and geographic distribution of the necessary experts. Many of the groups used regularly-scheduled Web meetings and telecoms extensively, to supplement the rare face-to-face opportunities. IPC scheduled and facilitated many such meetings, but some teams handled that on their own, though Jack and/or I tried to sit in on as many as we could manage.

Some teams made very successful use of the bite-size-pieces review and rewrite approach. To minimize the burden on the very finite number of subject matter experts on any given narrow topic, main sections were subdivided into small topic areas of a few pages and distributed to one or more experts on that specific area with a request to comment, edit, re-write, or correct just that small piece. Many more subject matter experts could afford the time to address a very small section, rather than tackling a 60 or 100 page major section. Of course, it greatly increased the time required for the team leader(s) to subdivide, coordinate, combine, and reconcile the inputs, but it also greatly increased our reach in getting input from far more experts than we might have done in the more traditional approach.

An executive committee consisting of the team/segment leaders and a few others met frequently in regularly-scheduled Web meeting cadence or status/coordination meetings. These were pretty strictly limited to status updates, identification/assignment-for-resolution of bottlenecks, and sharing of suggested directions or sources, on rigid agendas. All actual content discussions were taken off-line in smaller work teams to keep up the pace. With the accelerated schedule this time around, there were only four opportunities for face-to-face meetings of that executive group, and each was a mixed live and Web meeting for those unable to attend. The final session, hosted at a Jabil facility in Florida, was a final edit/clean-up/de-conflicting session the first week of January 2013.

From a data source perspective, there was more sharing of raw data and sources between IPC and other organizations than in the past, continuing a trend that began years ago. For example: For years now, the data behind the iNEMI organic interconnect section was written by IPC volunteers. In the 2013 release, we shared raw data for three specific segments, and then revised, expanded, and trimmed that raw data according to the needs of our targeted users. Smaller, but also important, cooperative efforts with JISSO, ITRS, HDPUG, IHS, and others are in place, and we expect this trend will grow as well.

Beaulieu: What did you want to accomplish?

Carter: The overall goals for the 2013 IPC International Technology Roadmap team remained as stated in the introduction “… to provide target audiences with a benchmark comparison for their current needs and capabilities, but more importantly, help them understand what they might need to compete over the near (1-3 years), mid-range (~5 years) and “long”-term (~10 or more years) periods. The goal is to provide that user with information that they can use to plan their staffing, equipment, and training investments to address those portions of the predicted market in which they plan to compete…” Specifically, in this release (and going forward) we wanted to:

1. Greatly increase the span of expert input, both in terms of the industries represented and international participation.
2. We continue to look for better coordination with the other road mapping organizations to more efficiently bring the best information possible to our various users, minimizing overlap as much as makes sense, and reconciling differences in data presented wherever possible.
3. We needed to identify and refine “best practices” in this new “distributed processing” approach, shelving those that don’t pan out, and expanding those that do.

We’re not yet where we need to be in all those areas, but we’re quite proud of the progress we’ve made so far. Like we’ve said, the process never really stops, but we are always looking for ways to improve the quality of the information we can provide to the users, and make the process itself more effective at reaching that goal.

Beaulieu: Can you tell us about some of the more interesting features in this edition?

Carter: A number of things are either altogether new or have greatly increased emphasis this year. Those that come to mind are:

1. We covered the new “distributed processing model” in some detail, earlier in this discussion, but working through the implementation of that process, and getting the teams used to the freedom of action and responsibility for completion of their individual sections was interesting. Sometimes, maybe just a little stressful for everybody, but even that bordered on fun, occasionally.
2. We’ve started toward a true “stewardship” outlook, and much expanded that section in content and scope, with more emphasis on true, comprehensive sustainability. We’ve just started to touch on the opportunities that this can bring, along with the burdens that most people think of immediately. Lots more interesting work to do there, and we’d very much like more input and participation from the players in that arena.
3. It’s amazing (to me, at least) how far-reaching the impacts are of the new alternatives in business models between OEM’s, ODM’s, EMS, fabricators, and the rise of contractor specialists. To be successful in this new environment requires tremendous flexibility of thinking and agility of response.
4. Printed electronics (which is a particular focus of mine) got much more attention this time around. It’s gratifying to watch the printed electronics industry as it grows out of its over-hyped past into a true contributor, whether it’s making possible products that weren’t easily achieved by more traditional means, or as one option to create elements within otherwise conventional electronic fabrication processes. It feels more a lot more real now.
5. We spoke about this before, but the process of coordinating our activities with others engaged in road mapping from other perspectives or for other users has been interesting. We believe there’s a lot more ground to cover there, and expect to have some more news along those lines in the next few months.

Beaulieu: Were there any surprises?

Carter: I’d been peripherally involved in the roadmap activity at IPC and perhaps more involved on smaller-scale roadmap projects at my earlier industrial employers, but the sheer scope of the effort continues to amaze me, as does the accumulated knowledge base and willingness to share that knowledge by the volunteer participants.

Working with this body of knowledge daily really brings home how much the difference in business models, governmental interest (encouraging or discouraging), tolerance of risk, and patience/persistence to work toward a long-term goal has on which technologies will prosper or lag in a given region of the world.

Beaulieu: Who will benefit from the new Roadmap?

Carter: We’ve made a concerted effort for the first time in this release to be very clear in who we were trying to serve, and what we could provide (and to some extent what we chose not to address). From the 2013 Roadmap itself:

The “stereotypical” users of the IPC International Technology Roadmap can be oversimplified into three general groupings;

• Chief technical officer of an operational unit of a company engaged in the fabrication or assembly of one or more of the categories of electronic interconnect structures addressed in this roadmap.

This could be the chief engineer of a single plant, or the CTO of a family of operations on several continents. Their likely uses of this information will be deciding where/if/how/what equipment upgrades will be needed to address the projected technologies over the next few years, and what technical skill sets (including design tools and skills) will need to be in place through training or hiring to address those needs. Both paths will be needed to prepare their budget submittals (capital and expense).

• Chief operating officer (VP-Operations and the like) of a company engaged in the fabrication or assembly of one or more of the categories of electronic interconnect structures addressed in this roadmap. Overlapping the CTO in some regards, but more concerned with operational level work flow and processes, operator skill sets needed over the next few years, budgeting for the time and funding to achieve those skill sets, etc.
• Mirroring those positions are the persons tasked with sourcing the technologies predicted over the time covered. Will the technologies their corporate business direction demands be readily and widely available, or are they likely to be still struggling at the cutting (or “bleeding”) edge of producibility, with the accompanying risks to schedule, high and variable costs, etc. Will their current supply base be capable, or do they need to find or develop new sources for the projected technologies?

Beaulieu: Where can people get a copy? Is it only on CD or is there a paper copy?

Carter: The document is available in the IPC online bookstore. 

Beaulieu: Marc, any final thoughts?

Carter: I want to thank you for the opportunity to go over this and again invite people who are interested in the future of the global electronics industry, and are willing to work, to contact me at MarcCarter@ipc.org.

Beaulieu: Thank you, Marc, for taking the time to answer these questions. I thank you and your team for all of the good work you’ve done in putting this very valuable document together for the entire industry.