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54 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2021 Energy Management e use of smart energy meters, either at a machine or line level, helps us to understand where energy is used in the same way smart meters are now common in our homes. In the immediate instance, energy savings can be made by understanding opportunities to put equipment into sleep-states much in the same way your laptop screen sleep darkens when you are away from it for a few minutes, and then perhaps goes to sleep if le doing noth- ing for a while. With CFX, multiple sleep states for any piece of equipment are defined, with messages to control equipment into and out of sleep-states in a timely manner, ensuring that equipment is ready for the next product, whilst taking maximum advantage of any down-time to reduce energy consumption. e rapidly increasing availability of renew- able energy sources has dramatically increased the variability and volatility of demand for elec- tricity from conventional sources and is diffi- cult to manage without some form of demand management. e cost of energy is changing from a fixed-rate tariff to a variable rate, with free energy available in some cases at certain times. e CFX energy and schedule man- agement messages allow solutions to plan and execute production activities matching energy demand to price. is helps achieve govern- ment targets for the reduced impact of manu- facturing on the environment. It's helping your pocket while saving the planet! Hermes Data Exchange e IPC Hermes standard is the smart "upgrade" of IPC's SMEMA standard, respon- sible for the movement of products on con- veyors between machines. e highlight of the simple upgrade is that Hermes supports com- pletely random mixed production with fully automated changeovers, without the need for additional barcode reading at each machine. Messages have been added to CFX v1.3 that make it interoperable with the Hermes stan- dard. For example, Hermes information can be transferred from line to line (such as topside to bottom-side) using CFX messages. SPI Data Update CFX supports the direct exchange of infor- mation between machines that are performing closed-loop analysis. Using CFX, closed-loop "AI" soware can be provided by any machine vendor or third party, without the need for any technical or business dependency. Enhance- ments have been made to the CFX data exchange and remote parameter adjustment capability for SPI processes, enhancing poten- tial value from closed-loop systems. Assurance of CFX 'Plug and Play' Having a unique fully-defined language of every message makes CFX unique in the industry. No middleware or translation so- ware is required. Any set of machines and solu- tions should work together, reducing deploy- ment time, the need for customization, and potential issues when soware is updated. In order to provide assurance of the "plug and play" ability, the list of mandatory and optional requirements is now defined in the standard, which matches the tests that are carried out as part of the official IPC accreditation process. It is highly recommended that all CFX users insist that all their machines have had official IPC certification. ere are many other additions to CFX v1.3, all designed to create a richer experience. CFX is the infrastructure on which multiple Indus- try 4.0 solutions work together. It will take time for commercial solutions to fully support the opportunities that CFX provides. Any company can start to use CFX in their own unique niche applications as well as in-house developed machine processes. For internal development use, there is a small cost to buy the standard, plus there is a completely free and fully docu- mented soware development kit (SDK). CFX data can be automatically secured with TLS level encryption, making CFX data exchange globally across the shopfloor, totally secure.