Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1035071
28 SMT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2018 It was critical to create a standard that would fulfill the needs of smart, modern manufactur- ing in the digital factory with true Industry 4.0 functionality. This was the common expecta- tion from everyone's customer base, whether or not they could articulate what they wanted. The analogy of an IIoT standard being like the cellphone brought the message home for many people. Having a standard that governs how telephone handsets from different vendors work on standard networks allows us to communicate freely, which equates in CFX as the protocol and data-encoding methods that were selected. The third critical piece—which no other standard has been able to completely define—is the language used. It does not work to a cellphone conversation where the two parties speak different languages and cannot understand a word the other is saying. For true plug and play, all parties have to communicate with a common language. In the case of CFX, the decision on the protocol was contentious, as there were a small number of realistic options and the support for each was strong. However, the requirements for CFX were quite clear. The protocol had to be secure and have encrypted data options when send- ing data externally—for example, to the cloud. A data compression facility also needed to be available to reduce data-rate requirements. Real-time operations, such as machines, did not have to care whether anyone or everyone was receiving their messages. Thus, a "send-it- and-forget-it" facility for broadcast messages, featuring a message broker, was a must. In addition, a direct point-to-point connec- tion for immediate command and response messaging was also required. As a consen- sus, the AMQP v1.0 protocol—having proven itself in the banking industry—was seen as the only logical choice that addressed all of these requirements. The availability of open-source, free-of-charge AMQP v1.0 brokers also fell completely in line with the open principles of the standard. Data encoding was a far simpler decision with JSON being accepted pretty unanimously, so messages could be read by humans and yet also be efficient in a modern format already familiar to web developers. Having these elements decided, the work then fell on the data content definition. There had not been a precedent for the definition of data content on the assembly factory shop floor. Very few people have ever gained a complete understanding of all the various content areas across manufacturing that need to be defined. A wide cross-section of experts in the indus- try was needed to describe events and param-