Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1035071
16 SMT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2018 We were able to, at a manufacturing show, have 22 competing companies communicate in a common language and have their output viewed on people's cell phones. We had an analytics tool that enabled them to commu- nicate to the cloud and have people monitor those devices on their cell phones. We were not able to find any other instance where this had happened, so it was like an industry first. We ran some 44 pieces of equipment. We had 800,000 messages delivered during the week, and it was nearly flawless. I don't really know that we had any real downtime. What was even more exciting is the ability to play at this level and come in; the barrier was extremely low. We were only using a small subset of CFX, so it was only a handful of messages. When finished, the standard will be much more capable with many more messages, on the order of 25- to 30-fold. Companies were able to come in within a week and were able to participate in the demonstration. No real long lead times. They came in, it was easy for them to implement, turn on, and jump in. That was the exciting spot. At productronica in Novem- ber last year, we were asked by one equipment manufacturer if we could do the demonstra- tion at IPC APEX EXPO. Within three months, we got 44 pieces of equipment running in an application and being able to be seen by thou- sands of people. That was the exciting part. A short turn- around time, 20 some companies that partic- ipated, 44 pieces of equipment, hundreds of thousands of messages, and it was almost flawless. Las Marias: In one of my previous interviews, one company said they were just made aware of CFX two weeks before the show. What they did is really focused on it, and in just two days, they were able to implement the standard to be able to join the demonstration. Bergman: It's just unprecedented. It's really been exciting. Europlacer has jumped in with both feet, and it's been great because now they've given us some feedback. They are pushing hard for implementation, and so they are finding that, "Okay, we need to tweak this, we need to tweak that." Recognize the fact that they are implementing a draft. The standard still hasn't been voted on, so we have what we believe is good content, but it hasn't gone through complete review and voting and such. They're working on that and they've been able to say, "This worked great for us. We need to tweak this here." They have been really excited. I met with them at Nuremberg, and they were really excited. They had four or five other questions, which led us to make some tweaks in the standard to identify some holes that they had worked as they were trying to do this implementation. I expect more of that to happen as companies push harder. We can't think of everything as we're writing the stan- dard. We're giving it our best shot, but some- body is going to come up and say, "Okay, I ran into a jam here. How do I handle this?" All right, we step back, figure out how to do it, and then we put a release out. We have had already, as we build awareness of this, content developed where we did not expect it.