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SMT007-Oct2018

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20 SMT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2018 ability, but you still need that MES that is pull- ing that. If the messages are there and there's nothing pulling it or storing it, you have no traceability. The fact is the messages are there; if you put in some layer of software that pulls them, you gain significant benefits for trace- ability and manufacturing parameters. Las Marias: How many companies are now supporting the standard? Bergman: We have a Supporters tab on our CFX website. I think it's as high as 50. However, one of those is the Hermes Standard Initiative, because they, as an initiative group support, see the benefits of collaboration between Hermes and CFX, and so they've added their logo under the CFX Supporter. We have proba- bly 30 or 40 members overlap, and so we pick up another 30 companies there. Maybe we're at 75-80 companies right now. And I'm actively asking the question. In my opinion, if you're trying to start a movement, you're trying to build a critical mass. The more companies that I can get to say, "We think this is important to our business," even if they're not implementing it tomorrow, but they believe it's important to their business, I want to add their logo. That will show the next guy. I'd like 500 logos on that page. I'll get them at some point. I'm happy with the start, but I'm out actively asking. I was in Germany recently. I was asking, "Look, one of my things I'm asking you for, I'd like to see your logo here as a partner." We will be doing more of that going forth. Las Marias: And there are more than 300 committee members now for the CFX? Bergman: It's pretty close. The individuals, I think, in our committee here that I have are around 250. I have another list in China. There are a few overlaps, but I think they're close to 100, so that's probably close. Las Marias: The initial draft of the CFX stan- dard was developed in record time. What does that show the industry? Bergman: I think it's pretty quick, as well. Actually, we spent a lot of time analyzing and trying to make the initial choice, and I proba- bly wasted six months going down the wrong path, because we thought it was the right path and it turned out not to work. In reality, I'm probably at about a year and a half, which is pretty fast in the scheme of consensus building standards. What it shows is that there is signif- icant frustration or demand for change, or to be able to implement something that should save money. This is a money-saving standard. There will be implementation cost, but the long-term savings are really significant. What's fascinating to me, because we had talked about committee counts, is that we have companies from everywhere. We have U.S. companies, we have European companies, we have companies from Japan, from South Korea, from China, from everywhere that are participating. I have guys who are coming up that have a piece of equipment, but they want to output CFX. They're writing in a completely

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