CST’s Jack Frost Joins Panel at SMTA’s Oregon Expo/Tech Forum on Future Trends in the EMS industry

As those of you who follow our blog and our company well know, Cascade Systems Technology (CST) has been actively advocating for and participating in efforts to support the return of semiconductor supply chain manufacturing here in the U.S., as embodied in the CHIPS & Science Act. We do this because we fervently believe investing in taking and securing a position of global semiconductor leadership along with self-reliance in the semiconductor supply chain is very much in our national interest, whether the benefit is economic strength, competitiveness, national security, or building and maintaining the world’s strongest and most talented workforce.

You can read my many comments about this topic – and how CST has endeavored to be involved in this sphere – via several of our previous blogs, including:

• Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici visits CST
• CST participates in the 10th Annual Manufacturer’s Symposium Sponsored by Intel and the Washington County Chamber of Commerce
• CST testimony to the Oregon Legislatures: Oregon should enact the R&D tax credit to encourage innovation at small- and mid-sized companies supporting chip-makers!
• For fans of American competitiveness, recent UO and TAO investments are putting us ahead of the game
• The time is right to regain our domestic semiconductor edge!

Adding to my own efforts to encourage aggressive investment in our nation’s electronics ecosystem, I am proud to shine a spotlight on my colleague here at CST, Jack Frost, Director of Business Development, for his participation in last week’s Oregon Expo & Tech Forum hosted at the Wingspan Event and Conference Center in Hillsboro, OR on June 20th by the Oregon Chapter of the Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA). I’ll elaborate on the mission and value of SMTA further below.

With the focus on understanding future trends shaping the EMS industry, and providing attendees with insights into global technology at a local level, Jack joined a panel of top-notch technical professionals – Srini Aravamudhan, Maria Mejias, and Kevin Byrd (all from Intel Corp.); Ray Prasad (Ray Prasad Consulting Group); Rob Rowland (Axiom Electronics); Sam Lytwynec (Indium Corp.) – to discuss the major challenges and innovations shaping the future of this industry, critical innovations needed to address tomorrow’s chip technology challenges, and noteworthy developments in topics ranging from high-density Ball Grid Arrays (BGAs) and bi-directional controlled thyristors (BCTs), to low/medium/high-temperature soldering and PCBs solutions.

For his part, Jack highlighted some of the assembly challenges and equipment innovation trends we and our customers here at CST have been keeping our eyes on or leveraging to resolve production challenges, efficiently. (You can review Jack’s slide-deck here.)

All in all, the panel in which Jack participated, and this year’s SMTA conference on the whole, was another reminder and reinforcement of how critical semiconductors and the supply chain (their surrounding/enabling technologies) are today. Be they PCBs and substrates, components, packages, and assemblies – or complete system assemblies with sheet metal, wire harnesses, plastics, testing – we must continue to bring innovation and leadership to all aspects of the domestic semiconductor supply chain.

Each and every day – and now, with long overdue, much-needed, and exciting public and private investments in infrastructure, research, and our nation’s talent pipeline (read: workforce development and STEM) – CST and companies like ours are manufacturing the future!”

–  Shantanu R. Gupta,
CEO, Cascade Systems Technology

More about Jack: Jack Frost is Director of Business Development at Cascade Systems Technology (CST). Prior to joining CST, he held a variety of leadership roles at MTI, ATS Automation, DW Fritz Automation, Teseda, Credence Systems, IMS, and Intel, in the areas of Sales, Marketing & Engineering. He holds a BSEE from Cornell University

More about the SMTA: According to its website, the “SMTA is an international network of professionals who build skills, share practical experience and develop solutions in electronic assembly technologies, including microsystems, emerging technologies, and related business operations.” To expand on that: From where I sit, this technical body serves a critical role in enabling innovation in SMT (Surface Mount Technology) so the latest chips can be reliably mounted on a PCB (Printed Circuit Board), without which none of the chip innovation can be realized or those chips be made even functional. As chips become larger in size and their packages become more complex, the process of reliably mounting these chips on a PCB using the SMT technology has also become a lot more complex, requiring solutions to warpage and thermal challenges throughout the SMT process. This requires focus on innovation and investment in the SMT category, just as it does across the domestic semiconductor supply chain, and organizations like the SMTA are critical to driving these efforts – which, in turn, helps the U.S. to stay competitive at a global level in the race for semiconductor and tech leadership.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us