Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/817722
88 SMT Magazine • May 2017 Manor: That's a good question. One thing that would be good to talk about is this whole no- tion of planning. I think all of the major ma- chine vendors here sell a very accurate, flexible, and fast machine. The machine is great, comes with amazing specs, but then the manufactur- er only gets like a 60% OEE. He goes to the ma- chine vendor and says, 'Why am I getting this OEE?' The reason usually is the high-mix en- vironment. We're seeing more and more high- mix, even segments which were traditionally high-volume, low-mix are starting to move to a higher mix, lower volume, and lower lot size. We even talked about lot size where this guy's making just one PCB of each product. Maybe it's a high-end missile, maybe it's a satel- lite, or maybe it's just that the product is so cus- tomized that every product is slightly different. Then the PCB has to be different and you're making all of these revisions. At the end of the day, your lot size is one and then it's all about planning. It's all about making sure that you plan properly – we're seeing more and more customers understand that planning today is just not good enough. They plan with white boards, they plan with Excel files, and it's impossible for some- body to take all of these considerations into ac- count. You need to think about your resources, how many operators you have and how many stencils you have. You have to think about ma- terials. Do I have enough material? You have to think about the calendar. When is my shift? When is my shift ending? You have to think about open profiles. I mean, you don't want to put a board with a low profile after a warm pro- file because you have to let the oven cool and that can take a couple of hours. There are a lot of considerations, and without a tool that takes that all into account, simulates that, and builds a good plan, it's impossible to really get good utilization from the machines. Now, we see a couple of vendors here on the floor having and promoting a grouping and planning solution. We're also promoting a planning solution, and we've really been in- vesting in this solution for the last couple of years to simulate all of the different factors in the production floor to create a feasible plan-- not theoretical, but a really optimized plan. It over the last couple of years. One of the biggest things that we've added is the whole support for flexible and rigid-flex PCBs. A lot of work has been done in these kinds of multi-layered, multi-stack-up PCBs, which are being used in cellphones and wearables. Now, ODB can nice- ly represent them. We will continue to enhance the data mod- el so customers can pass all of the data around PCBs into manufacturing to minimize and make this design-to-manufacturing flow as lean and as quick as possible. Las Marias: So, it is indeed like a de facto stan- dard, right? Everyone is already using it. Manor: Everybody has been using it, most of these machine vendors out here, their appli- cations can read it. We provide a free view- er, and there could be somebody developing a non-Mentor layout system, sending it to an EMS which is using non-Mentor applications for manufacturing, and they could be using ODB++. We believe that ODB++ is best because we try to make use of all of the data and all of the intelligence in the format. There's noth- ing prohibiting any of the other vendors here to use of ODB++. We do help any vendor which comes to us and says, "I have a question. I have an issue. I want to support ODB++." It's completely open. While we do own the copyright and maintain the specification, we're trying to really do what is the best of the industry. Las Marias: Oren, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think we should be talking about? MENTOR GRAPHICS: CONNECTING THE MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT " There's nothing prohibiting any of the other vendors here to use of ODB++. "