Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1058015
24 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2018 additional messages." At IPC APEX EXPO, we will start to discuss messaging for the 1.1 version of CFX, which will be part of the activity that takes place in San Diego this year. In addition, we will high- light several things at IPC APEX EXPO 2019, includ- ing the collaboration between IPC and the HERMES Consor- tium. The HERMES standard should also be approved as an IPC standard IPC-9852 because that is undergoing a consensus vote very soon. The HERMES Consortium will also meet at IPC APEX EXPO 2019, so they will be talking about any poten- tial upgrades for that standard format. Then, the most exciting thing will be the show floor demonstration. We plan to have two manufacturing lines. We needed to go with two because there are more and more compa- nies interested in showcasing their capability. We will have one manufacturing line, which is a combination of both the HERMES format, which will be IPC-9852, and CFX, which is IPC-2591. We'll run messages in both of those standards and an assembly operation on the show floor. We will have a second line, which will be all CFX. Some companies don't do both formats. Some companies have said, "I can only have so many manufacturing pieces of equipment within the line." So, the second line gives more companies the ability to participate outside of the combined HERMES/CFX line. I think people are going to get to see some very exciting activ- ities. We've been building on this. We did the first CFX manufacturing line in Birmingham, England, in the U.K. in September. Then, we did one at the LEAP Expo with MMI in Shen- zhen, China, in October. This will be the next step—adding in collaboration with HERMES— and then expanding from our virtual demon- strations when we have that at this year's IPC APEX EXPO. Michael Ford: Yeah, it's easy to forget that it was not even a year ago at IPC APEX EXPO 2018 when people saw CFX working for the first time. The people there could not believe that they could just go to a QR code with their mobile phone and look at data with value and meaning from so many differ- ent machine vendors all in one platform—no installation or configuration, it was just there. That was the point where started to chart the history of what's happened over the last year in terms of people getting really excited about it. Whenever we talk about CFX, you would think that people would be into all of the messaging, protocol, and technical stuff, which people do have an interest in. But for me, most of the questions surround, "How is CFX going to solve Industry 4.0 and how is going to bring me that value?" People are talk- ing about the value that is brought for manu- facturers as well as that for machine vendors. For example, in the beginning, we had a number of machine vendors who were inter- ested in taking part in that very first demo. What you will see coming up is that so many more machine vendors have come along. Even those who had kind of been holding out, hedg- ing their bets, and waiting to see what the industry was going to do have heard from customers who had specific issues in manu- facturing related to Industry 4.0, and suddenly related to making machine processes smarter than they used to be. They're being faced with the idea of having to develop something again, worrying it's going to cost too much money, and it will all bespoke for this customer. But now CFX is in their minds, and they're thinking, "Well, with that CFX demo we saw, we could use the messages in that to achieve what we want to do." They start to really understand the business process that this represents for the whole industry. It's Michael Ford