MORRISVILLE, NC — iNEMI is releasing the 2019 iNEMI Roadmap and is implementing a piecemeal delivery process.

For this cycle, roadmap chapters will be published in waves, with two to eight chapters included in each wave, released every two to three weeks.

The first wave, now available online, includes four chapters: Smart Manufacturing; Modeling; Simulation & Design Tools; Sustainable Electronics; and Board Assembly.

This year, iNEMI marks 25 years of roadmapping the needs of the electronics manufacturing industry. The consortium published its first roadmap in 1994 and, over the years, the number of technology areas covered has grown and changed, but the focus has always remained on providing insights into the technology requirements for success throughout the supply chain.

“Twenty-five years of roadmapping underscores the success of iNEMI’s methodology, which is founded on the participation of experts from industry and academia working together to forecast needs and gaps,” said iNEMI CEO Marc Benowitz. “This collaborative activity helps enable the readiness of our evolving global electronics manufacturing industry.”

This is the first year the iNEMI Roadmap has featured a chapter on smart manufacturing. This chapter highlights the challenges within the electronics manufacturing supply chain in terms of materials flow and conversion, data flow architecture, digital building blocks and security. It maps out the present capabilities and needs, both vertically and between the key manufacturing chain segments. It discusses and prioritizes areas that must be addressed to enable deployment readiness.

Projected growth in connected and smart devices presents evolving modeling, simulation and design tools with challenges in related areas, such as infrastructure for connectivity, systems for managing and communicating big data, smart devices and connected devices. These trends shift the focus of MS&DT from component-level analysis to a system-level approach. In addition, the emergence of improved computing infrastructure and the rise of algorithms that take advantage of these systems (e.g., artificial intelligence and machine learning) provide a rich environment and opportunity for improvements in MS&DT.

The 2019 chapter underscores the value of balancing adaptation and mitigation with an emphasis on the circular economy. The chapter covers four main topics: environmental sustainability, eco-design, materials and value recovery.

Achieving low-cost, fine-line technology, and the increasing density of board designs and miniaturization are major themes for the 2019 Board Assembly roadmap. The chapter highlights the need for such technologies and processes as automated printing, dispensing, placement and rework equipment to handle fine-pitch requirements; rework and placement processes for larger body sizes; reworkable underfills to enable further adoption of larger packages and fine-pitch area array technology; and processes for reworking temperature-sensitive devices.

The 2019 Roadmap is now available at https://www.inemi.org/2019-roadmap-overview.

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