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60 SMT Magazine • March 2015 smart data in a usable form. The experts see this as one of the major challenges. Specialists are of the opinion that the creation of an Industry 4.0 standard will take at least another 10 years. Standards exist already which are intended to regulate certain areas of the field of electron- ics. For example, DIN EN 61690-2 ap- peared already in 2001 and speci- fies the data exchange format for the development of elec- tronic circuits, namely the electronic design inter- change format (EDIF). But this has nothing to do with interdis- ciplinary data ex- change. Worldwide stan- dardization is in- comparably more difficult than stan- dardization at the national level. An example from another field of endeavor will help to elucidate this point. In 1887, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof published the fundamentals of Esperanto, which are still valid today. Esperanto was supposed to be an easy-to-learn, neutral language which would facilitate international communication. There's a community which keeps Esperanto alive, but after nearly 130 years the language has by no means become interna- tionally accepted. But there are international standards which everyone works with today. Where data trans- mission is concerned, standards like TCP/IP, LAN, WLAN and Bluetooth are now used world- wide—and the Internet wouldn't function at all without at least a minimum level of global standardization. In other areas, things continue with national standards. But without the advanced developments of the high-tech industries required to automate their own manufacturing processes, further considerations regarding a project with such globe-spanning goals as those set by Industry 4.0 would never even have cropped up. However, some companies are making con- tributions to advancing the consistent integra- tion of computer systems into the entire pro- duction sequence during product development. They have recognized the fact that computer- aided sequences assure that conditions are held constant even in highly complex, sen- sitive systems. Embedded com- puting was routine practice at the systems long before it became a matter of pub- lic focus. With embed- ded computing, the computer con- troller doesn't take over for the user, but rather makes it possible to manage ex- tremely complex and variable pro- cesses in a clear-cut manner, and to keep them under control. Of course the require- ments, as they've evolved in recent years in the field of electronics manufacturing, and thus PCB production as well, necessi- tate further development of the production systems. Processes that were very difficult to im- plement just a few years ago are now standard practice in daily production. Thanks to master software solutions, systems can be used more flexibly and efficiently. Machine utilization is being optimized, and good quality is assured for production output. These "intelligent" software solutions en- sure that equipment can be reliably controlled and monitored. It's a closed system consisting of monitoring tools and various modules, each of which completes its own individual task. Enormous amounts of data are acquired by the modules from the system, and monitored. Mas- ter software compiles the data and evaluates it (i.e., to keep the specified parameters constant for the respective manufacturing profile). The modular system can be assembled into individualized packages and matched to the artICle InDUSTrY 4.0 InITIaTIvES continues