Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1189040
DECEMBER 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 79 able to collect data and analyze it, we can help reduce scrap at an ear- lier stage in the process so that you have fewer products wasted. That's where a combination of not just extracting data but using it in the right way to give you those results. You can start detecting where train- ing is missing, or if there are anom- alies earlier. There's a lot of ele- ments where you can start making a difference in terms of the margins and operational costs. Johnson: You just brought up the human fac- tor. It seems that it isn't just the equipment. You have to change the human processes to go along with that. Kantelal: Yes, but we don't do that. We pro- vide the technology and things to allow the customers to see it sooner. We are not going out and retraining. We're not going to pre- tend we know more about the manufacturing and the training process than the manufactur- ers themselves. It's about providing the tools that allow you to see inside sooner rather than later. We think of ourselves as a technology that can provide the infrastructure that allows for Industry 4.0 to happen. There are a lot of conversations about AI and ML in the indus- try, but you can't get there before you have the infrastructure. You have the architecture in place, so there's a step-by-step process that you want to do to be successful. You might be able to do one or two projects in a facility to showcase the greenfield options. But if you want it to be scalable and work across all your plans, you need to be able to take step by step and make sure it scales. Johnson: Is Arch working with some large cus- tomers? Kantelal: Yes. We've been working with Flex to enable real-time and predictive data analysis in their global factories. Arch's technology is going into key Flex factories, pulling raw data from both old and new machines to generate actionable metrics. It's industrial data manage- ment on a grand scale. Johnson: What about smaller customers? Kantelal: Not at the moment directly, but we are open to it. We have made developer kit versions of our hardware technology, and we have software as well that we would provide, which makes it very easy to be able to custom- ize what we need. We're looking for partners that would make that possible, but there's so much that needs to be done. We need to start somewhere. But no, the technology would be the exact same thing, so we are making devel- oper kit versions so that manufacturers them- selves or system integrators can use our tech- nology to extract the data and connect it to an MES. We're making that possible that way. Johnson: Imagine I'm a facility manager, and I know that I have extreme pressure from my board, boss, and customers, as well as just watching my operational data, all telling me that I need to move to something much more digital. I'm getting squeezed in all of those directions. From your perspective at Arch, what do I need to know? What are the critical factors that I need to get started on for this to be successful? Kantelal: We usually start at a much higher level because there is an element of getting approval from the top down. It makes the con- versation a lot easier. Figure 1: Data extraction connector PODs.