FEATURE SMART TECH & IOT
Building the future smartly: Connecting SMT lines to enable Industry 4.0
Words by Ranjan Chatterjee, Vice President, Cimetrix I
f you’re wondering why there are few examples of Industry 4.0 in operation, given the time the concept has been discussed, then you’re not alone. We’ve been talking the smart factory talk for years now, but few are walking the smart factory walk. The question is, when so much value can be achieved and shared throughout the value chain, why is it taking so long for the digital transformation of electronic manufacturing to fully kick in? The answer, I suspect, is that digital transformation happens from the ground up, and we are struggling to build the foundation: connectivity, the basis on which all the smart technology is built. Connectivity needs to occur both from machine to machine and from machine to host, or system. With thousands of machines out there, many with different interfaces and standards, this can seem overwhelming, or at the very least, expensive and time consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, we believe it can be simplified, scaled and accelerated, all within a sensible budget. Cimetrix’s Sapience was created with that in mind, and with the goal of getting an SMT line ‘connected’ in less than a man-day without spending a fortune. It is tempting to get bogged down in
the standards debate. Suffice to say that there are numerous ‘good’ standards out there, ranging from newer standards like CFX, Hermes, SEMI-ELS, to older, reliable standards like GEM, used extensively in the semiconductor industry. Investing in the GEM standard over many years, it has delivered a robust solution that fulfils all the key criteria we consider essential for a standard to operate successfully in a smart manufacturing ecosystem, even across multiple sites. In fact, in my time at Motorola, we had dashboards providing data from thousands of
36 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2020 | ELECTRONICS
machines around the world, using GEM as the connectivity standard. The SMT world could learn a thing or two from the semiconductor industry. Big players like Intel invested heavily in creating a workable standard for all to use: GEM is that standard.
However, not all manufacturing companies are identical, and nor are all SMT lines. EMS companies range from the smallest shop with a single SMT line to global players with over one hundred factories and tens of thousands of machines. Some have grown organically, adding the same lines throughout multiple geographies. Others have grown through acquisition of both OEM facilities and other EMS companies. These companies have machines from multiple vendors and of varying vintages and specifications. They all need connecting to make a digital ecosystem that delivers even the simplest value. It is the complexity of this connectivity
that is hampering, or challenging, the deployment of smart systems that will deliver the intelligence needed to make manufacturing better.
Cimetrix’s Sapience, one such tool for connecting machines in a manufacturing line
Ranjan Chatterjee, vice president, Cimetrix
In my experience, this is what the industry calls ‘analysis paralysis’ - what stops them moving forward with the digital transformation of their factories. If we look at the history of the fourth industrial revolution and the smart factory movement from the very start, it has been full of promise and, as many comment, short on delivery. At the beginning, there was confusion about what a smart factory might look like and what would be needed to deploy it. Once the need to digitise it was recognised, people moved on to debate how it could be deployed. Equipment manufacturers adopted the term as they worked hard to ensure their machines were compatible with this brave new world of manufacturing. Meanwhile, standards have developed, and other ingredient technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) have advanced at great speed. Now we can really grasp Industry 4.0 and make it a reality. We can digitally enable our entire ecosystem by connecting every machine and collecting the data that will make the factory smart. We can also deploy technologies like AI to mine that data and create the intelligence that will improve and accelerate decision making to promote better outcomes. And we can deliver unique levels of transparency and traceability, simplifying the audit process and ensuring that we trace a problem right back to its cause. In short, everything is ready and it all starts with connectivity. This is the foundation of the smart factory. Companies like Cimetrix, with tools like Sapience, are ready to connect facility, machine and process, helping to accelerate the smart factory journey.
Cimetrix
www.cimetrix.com / ELECTRONICS
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