Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1181966
NOVEMBER 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 23 Johnson: Dave, are you referring to the exter- nal control boxes that Siemens and Mentor have to offer? Meyers: Yes. My familiarity at this point is with the external box where you can run that one database language; they can feed information from the different manufacturing lines through those boxes. Those boxes then read back to the server database and allow you to input infor- mation that's pertinent to your manufacturing line. Most of my background is in the packag- ing side of this. While I'm familiar with exactly what it takes to get a board done, panelized, depanelized, and tested, the actual printed cir- cuit design was not my area of focus. Holden: Right now, many companies are at level one or two of the OSI hierarchy of appli- cations within a smart factory, but it appears that Siemens is at level three or four. Do you focus mainly on levels three and four and the cloud? Those higher levels are the big promise of Industry 4.0, as well as digital twin. Meyers: Digital twin is like a simulation model; it allows the mechanical and electrical people to design the product in a three-dimensional environment. We also have the ability with those tools to replicate the manufacturing envi- ronment. From a PCB perspective, if you're in a pick-and-place machine, you can simulate the machine; you can simulate the pick-and- place head as it passes over the board. You can look at what traditionally would have been a collision problem, like hitting a connector on the way to placing a resistor. The digital twin allows you to virtually build your product and walk through all of the steps, not box build, but it includes box build. It also includes the manual labor and laying out a line in such a way that you can look at human interaction with the product as it goes down the line to look at efficiencies or inefficiencies An engineer using tablet automation and a robot arm machine in a smart factory with a real-time monitoring system application.