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82 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2018 and well-defined level of detail is available at all times. Unacknowledged losses are no lon- ger out of sight and can be included in any activity related to performance improvement, optimization, and operational decision-making all in line with the goals of Industry 4.0. Effects of decisions made and changes executed can be seen, measured, and continuously refined, and in this case, directly contribute to the over- all productivity of the factory. At IPC APEX EXPO 2018, we saw the world's first demonstration of the Connected Factory Exchange (CFX). Though machine communi- cation is nothing new, the fact that key met- rics and data from any type of machine from any vendor could be viewed on demand by visitors on their mobile phones without any installation or configuration of software was an eye-opener. The barriers of having differ- ent communication methods—as well as dif- ferent levels of data content from machines— had been eliminated. One year later at IPC APEX EXPO 2019, we look forward to seeing the published CFX stan- dard in action in terms of the scope and depth of communication now supported, gathering data for use in dashboards, AI decision-mak- ing, and factory optimization. Whatever the software tools of choice are for manufacturing, the ability to have visibility of the status and performance of every event that takes place on the factory floor provides the opportunity to see and understand exactly where time and opportunities are being lost. Software tools at the factory level can then utilize this information to optimize the entire factory in real time. Machine vendors also have the opportunity to get significantly more