Sessions Schedule & Location

Track	Design	Manufacturing	Business
Meeting Room	Meeting Room 1	Meeting Room 2	Meeting Room 3
Morning Keynote - 8:00 – 8:50am	KEYNOTE: Oregon: The State of Manufacturing Angela Wilhelms, OBI
9:00 - 9:50 am	Maximize Return on Investment with New Product Development Doug Porter – designPORT	Manufacturing Capacity Forecasting Leonard Weitman - Weitman Consulting	Accelerating the Market Adoption of an Innovation Jerry Vieira, The QMP Group
10:00 – 10:50am	Does the Future of Electronics Manufacturing Lie in its Past? Joe Fjelsted - Warrant Tech	Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss – AI in the workplace. Nolan Johnson - Managing Editor, IConnect007	Leveraging AI for Sales Growth: Real-World Business Applications Jim Kaigh - Sales Xceleration
11:00 – 11:50am	BOM recommendations for Supply Chain Success Gary DeGrave - Milwaukee Electronics	Future Trends in the Electronics Industry and Their Impact on Surface Mount Board Assembly Jack Frost - Cascade Systems Tech	Getting started with patents Laura Zager, Thermo Fisher Scientific
Lunch: 12:00pm
Afternoon keynote - 1:00 – 1:50pm	KEYNOTE PANEL: State of the Supply Chain 2024 Moderator: Mike Schindele; Panelists: Rob Rowland (Axiom), Alexis Canfield (TTI), Pat Duggan (Temco NW), Chris Pulone (A-Dec)
2:00 – 2:50pm	Global Electromagnetic Compatibility Standards and Regulations Ryan Benitez - ElectroMagnetic Investigations Test Laboratory	Flex PCB Fabrication Jerome Larez, NextGen PCBs	What Intelligence Will Improve Business Paul Menig, Business Accelerants
3:00pm (End)

Sessions & Keynotes

Accelerating the Market Adoption of an Innovation

Presenter: Jerry Vieira
Business Track

Tech start-ups, small tech-related support businesses, and large multi-national companies alike, experience the challenge of accelerating the market adoption of their latest innovation. A slow market uptake can be frustrating to all: owners, investors, inventors, banks, and business managers. Stretched-out cash flow projections, continually modified schedules or the need for additional dilutive investment can make life painful and embarrassing – bringing CTO’s, CFO’s, board members and investors to verbal impatience. The problem often seems immune to even large doses of marketing expense.

Little known to many technologists and marketers is the body of research-based empirical science available to enable and accelerate the market adoption of an innovation. This talk will reveal the concepts, strategies, tools, and approaches derived from that research, the empirical marketing science conclusions derived from it, its parallels in military strategy, and the real-world successes of 30+ years of deploying those insights. It will open your eyes and minds (instead of your wallets) to reveal and quickly resolve the root causes of your slow market adoption challenges or accelerate the traction of those offerings simply not moving as well as you had hoped.

Topics Include:

The fundamentals of the adoption of innovation
Diagnosing the friction of market adoption
The “Everyone can use it!” trap.
The Magic of Market Focus
Selecting the best foothold market
The facts and fallacies of low introductory pricing
Leveraging the Intra-Market Network: The Experts, Opinion Leaders, Venues, Vehicles
Managing the New Business Development & Sales process

Getting Started with Patents

Presenter: Laura Zager
Business Track

Curious about how patents work, and how to get one? This session will orient attendees to the patenting process and discuss timelines, costs, and other considerations.

Does the Future of Electronics Manufacturing Lie in its Past?

Presenter: Joseph Fjelstad
Design Track

Electronics manufacturing has followed a well-worn path laid down by generations of creative engineers and scientists over the last almost century with constant incremental refinements being made to the processes from chip to system. Over the last six decades there has been an immense effort to make ever smaller transistors and in words taken from Gordon Moore’s seminal paper projecting the future of integrated circuits by “cramming” more transistors onto them. The wall that he knew existed is finally being reached and packaging is overtaking semiconductor manufacturing in importance to allow the process to continue. Projections for multiple trillion transistor integrated circuit assemblies are on the horizon. This presentation will take both a technological and philosophical look at the ramifications of continuing down that “well worn: path and question the wisdom of following it further and instead look a few threads that were abandoned or ignored and explore whether or not they might have been more fully explored and if it is really too late to examine more carefully things that were left behind or not yet fully appreciated, such as the Occam Process.

Future Trends in the Electronics Industry and Their Impact on Surface Mount Board Assembly

Presenter: Jack Frost
Manufacturing Track

This session will discuss the current state of the SMT manufacturing process and where we see future challenges in the industry. As the challenges of cost, increasing density, power consumption, manufacturing efficiency and maintaining quality increase, what process improvements can we foresee going forward? What new SW and Hardware tools are needed? Is AI a possible solution? How can we address the shortage of skilled workers?

Leveraging AI for Sales Growth: Real-World Business Applications

Presenter: Jim Kaigh
Business Track

In today’s competitive business landscape, small businesses are increasingly leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive sales growth and streamline their processes. This presentation will explore how AI tools and practices are transforming sales strategies by optimizing lead generation, customer engagement, and sales efficiency. Focusing on practical applications, attendees will gain insights into how businesses can utilize AI for sales strategy development, customer profiling and outreach, personalized marketing efforts and other sales-related activities.

The presentation will highlight specific AI tools including ChatGPT, showcasing how they assist in analyzing customer data, automating sales tasks, and improving the accuracy of sales forecasting. Through case studies, we will discuss how small businesses have successfully integrated AI to enhance productivity, reduce costs, and increase revenue.

This session aims to demystify AI and provide actionable, practical strategies for small business owners to begin their AI journey, driving sales and staying competitive in an evolving market.

Flex PCB Fabrication

Presenter: Jerome Larez

While traditional rigid printed circuit boards (PCBs) dominate the market due to their widespread use in various electronic devices, flexible printed circuits (FPCs) are increasingly used in applications where flexibility, spacing-saving, and lightweight characteristics are crucial. The general fabrication processes for both PCBs and FPCs are similar, however there are different material and design considerations needed when planning to use an FPC in an electronic device. We’ll discuss some of the material and design options for an FPC that will aid in manufacturability.

Maximize Return on Investment with New Product Development

Presenter: Doug Porter
Design Track

Doug Porter will share how successful companies are making the most of their new product development budgets. Learn some simple techniques that can be applied to your own business. And finally how to measure exactly how much you are gaining from new products and if your organization is getting better or worse each month.

Keynote Panel: State of the Supply Chain 2024

Presenter: Mike Schindele, Alexis Canfield, Pat Duggan, Chris Pulone, and Rob Rowland
Panel Discussion

This panel will discuss current supply chain management issues and answer audience questions.

Topics available include:

Current supply–demand situation
Operational risk mitigation
The value of early supplier involvement
Use of factory representatives in problem solving
E-procurement: the digital supply chain
Component risk assessment and mitigation: country of origin; lifecycle
Use of artificial intelligence (e.g. ChatGPT)
Supplier relationship strategy
Contract management
Sustainability

BOM recommendations for Supply Chain Success

Presenter: Gary DeGrave
Design Track

This talk will focus on design to production and will include areas such as bill of material considerations (ex: preparing a BOM for UL and other agency approvals), part lifecycle considerations (ex: how to NOT spec a part that is at the end of life and where to check).

What Intelligence Will Improve Business

Presenter: Paul Menig
Business Track

There are multiple levels of intelligence that can improve your business. Artificial Intelligence is just one and you have been using it for decades already. You have various accreditations for your quality systems. Yet, you may still be struggling to grow your revenue, earnings, and value. This session will show you some new ways to REV up your business.

Oregon: The State of Manufacturing

Presenter: Angela Wilhelms
Keynote

Oregon is known for many things, but manufacturing is not always one of them. Yet, Oregon has a long history of industrial manufacturing that punches above its weight economically. The manufacturing sector is an important contributor to Oregon’s economic health, yet recent trends are cause for concern when it comes to the ability of businesses to survive and thrive. Policymakers must take note. Contributing to this is a political climate that undervalues the necessary role business plays in creating prosperity and lifting communities. As National Manufacturing Month comes to a close, learn more about Oregon: The State of Manufacturing from Angela Wilhelms, president & CEO of Oregon Business & Industry. OBI, Oregon’s affiliate for the National Association of Manufacturers works—through research, education, advocacy and political action—to impact state policies to advance its mission of creating a healthy, prosperous and competitive Oregon.

Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss: AI in the Workplace

Presenter: Nolan Johnson
Manufacturing Track

Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, that’s a practical fact. What we’ve learned over the years is that innovative technology often finds its “killer app” somewhere unexpected, somewhere other than the initial vision for the technology. Why should AI be any different? In this talk, we’ll survey current research on the impact of AI, and how AI is likely to mature into the printed circuit board manufacturing chain.

Manufacturing Capacity Forecasting

Presenter: Leonard Weitman
Manufacturing Track

All manufacturers need to understand their overall line’s capacity, and each process’s capacity, to plan and keep up with growing customer product demand and changing product mix. In addition to keeping up with product demand, it is important to understand future equipment needs for the purpose of forecasting required space, capital, and labor.

Many small to medium-sized companies do not have the enterprise resource planning tools, or in-house expertise, to readily develop these production capacity forecasts. The methodology discussed in this presentation provides answers to the above business needs by considering the following attributes:

Products manufactured
Expected product demand for the foreseeable future
Process flow for each product
Equipment used for each process
Equipment used for each material movement
Processing rate at each process step
Process yield (scrap rate) at each process step
Equipment reliability (unplanned downtime) and preventive maintenance time
Labor required at each process step and material movement

Applying the above attributes, using a common spreadsheet, future needs for equipment, space, capital, and labor are forecasted. Once equipment needs over time are understood, it is also possible to identify a floorplan designed for minimally disruptive growth, and opportunities for automation, more sophisticated equipment, and utility usage reduction.

Global Electromagnetic Compatibility Standards and Regulations

Presenter: Ryan Benitez
Design Track

A review of the history of electromagnetic interference going back to 1864. The need for EMC standards and regulations will be discussed. A review of some of the current EMC terms will be included. The development process for International (IEC) and European (EN) EMC standards will be outlined. Differentiation between different standards will be presented, such as for generic, product family and product specific standards.