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www.us-tech.com


September, 2017


Smart Reflow: Industry 4.0 is Actually Delivering


By Vitor Barros, General Manager, KIC Europe


ome companies may find the change to Industry 4.0 over- whelming, though it is one of the most exciting developments in the manufacturing industry in decades. It promises vast improve- ments for both manufacturers and their customers.


S


Part of the challenge stems from currently available information — difficulty understanding exactly what the benefits will be for the aver- age factory, and in calculating the return on investment. It may be helpful to bring the discussion down to a tangible level and to isolate one part of the entire smart electronic assembly process, such as reflow. For many years, reflow oven manufacturers have done an impres- sive job improving ovens. The ovens get ever more stable and more effi- cient. The next step is to acquire, analyze and share data in order to run the ovens, as well as the entire factory, more effectively. We know that a reflow oven needs to solder the assembly in accordance with the sol- der paste, components and substrate tolerances or specifications. This is called the process window, and is measured with a time-temperature profile. We often think of the oven as a “profile-making-machine.” Engineers and their customers want to know whether the PCBs are produced in spec. So they take great care in selecting a combination of temperatures and conveyor speeds to create the correct profile on the PCB, along with settings for nitrogen, vac-


the user? Much has been said and written about Industry 4.0 and smart oven technologies, but let’s focus on what the technology will do for the electronics manufacturer. Smart technologies need to serve a purpose, and the benefits need to far exceed the investment. We are left with two main benefits:


Waste elimination. According to an IPC study, the average electronics


Finally, the smart oven can elimi- nate many conventional manual tasks.


Documentation and traceability. The beauty of these new capabilities is that they can be measured, and we can run clear ROI analyses on the smart oven investments.


For example, according to a KIC report, an initial investment of €20,000 ($23,607) to upgrade to a


€81,363 ($96,038).


These numbers represent a profit increase over an entire year. Smart oven technology also repre- sents many other kinds of benefits during production. The actual machines may vary from vendor to vendor, but Industry 4.0 technology generally includes the following com- ponents:


Full automation. 


Process transparency and traceability.


Flexible production capabilities. Connectivity.


Energy efficiency. Data analytics.


Machine learning. Retrofitability.


Reflow ovens have billions of possible profiles. Smart oven technology can choose the right one.


factory suffers 37 percent downtime. This must be reduced. Also scrap and rework can be greatly reduced, since the smart oven allows for more con- trollable tolerances.


The average engineer spends 40 percent of his or her time looking for people, equipment, information, and other needed puzzle pieces to complete a job.


uum, airflow, and any other vari- ables that may be required. They also perform spot checks by running a manual profiler through the oven from time to time.


Enter the Smart Oven


Enter the smart oven. What is it? What are the tangible benefits to


Time can be saved. According to a recent study, the average engineer spends 40 percent of his or her time looking for people, equipment, infor- mation, and other needed puzzle pieces to complete a job.


The smart oven also reduces unnecessary energy consumption, by lowering its energy use when at rest.


smart oven can reduce overall down- time per week by two hours. Running two shifts, this can increase capacity by 3 percent. Profit increase is 2.7 percent and the ROI of the machine purchase is 3.5 months. In this case, the line produced 436,800 units per year. This was increased to 449,280, boosting overall profit by €67,885 ($80,129).


Another scenario, similar to the first, figures in an additional yield improvement of 0.5 percent. With the capacity increase of 3 percent, profit is then raised by 3.2 percent. The ROI of this purchase is reduced to less than three months.


With the increase in first-pass yield, and the same number of total boards produced, profits increase by


A reflow oven has billions of possible recipes. Smart optimization software searches through all of them exhaustively — in a few sec- onds — and selects the the best one based on programmed criteria. The oven is generally the slow- est machine in the line to change over. In order to reduce this time, the software identifies a common recipe for a wide range of products, or it will search according different conveyor speeds, while keeping the zone tem- perature settings fixed.


Embedded sensors in the oven calculate each PCB’s profile on the fly and compare it with the estab- lished process window. The system can instantly send an alert on out-of- spec situations or will warn about an unstable process. Also, machine and profile data are always stored. With smart oven technology, there is full process traceability for each individual PCB. Automatic loading and verification of programs is secured by barcodes. Instant trou- bleshooting of yield issues on the line is enabled. Real-time data flows to the factory network and MES sys- tem. A centralized database allows virtually-instant identification of the relevant data and its sharing, and is accessible from anywhere on any


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