Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1189040
14 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2019 Matties: I think the key points there are data overload and interpretation because they have to realize and choose what their critical mea- surements are for them. Manor: Exactly. Matties: Every factory is a bit different. But I would think across the board, 20% of the mea- surements are going to work for 80% of the people. Manor: The technology is there, so anybody can buy Tableau and all of these companies and get big data. Technology-wise, it's not a big issue, but none of these systems are made for electronics. If you want to get a report later on which feeder had the most issues, and you want to get something about the reference designator, there's nothing there. If you're in food and beverage, some of the systems have already been customized; unfortunately, PCB is not such a big industry, and there is noth- ing off the shelf. Either you take a team and invest a couple of million dollars in building the system, or you come to a partner like us. It's expensive and takes a lot of time to take these big data analytics systems and custom- ize them for electronics. There's no real point. What's the point in putting in all of this effort? You can definitely take some of our reports, and the 80/20 rule, and hire some data ana- lysts and scientists and process experts to dig out more insights out of that. Matties: Are you working with data analysts that you bring into the companies as a con- sultant? Manor: Yes. We have a cou- ple of process experts who say, "We've analyzed a stencil and printing, and we want to show you some of the insights that we've received. For exam- ple, what's your philosophy regarding cleaning distance?" Some customers will tell me they clean the stencil every new workload; others say they clean it every hour. Some people say they clean it when they get a lot of defects. You see that many cus- tomers don't really have a strategy around it. When you look at the data, you see that clean- ing the stencil is the worst thing you can do because the quality right after is very bad. It's like putting new ink in your printer; right after you put in a new inkjet cartridge and the first couple of pages are iffy. The same is true with the stencil printer. Anything you can do to avoid cleaning the stencil is good. If you look at the data, you can analyze it and decide after what type of defects you should clean it because that's your best approach, and it's probably dirty. When your process is out of control, your stencil is bad; you have an environmental issue, and some other consumables are an issue. Going to the stencil cleaning process is not always the right approach, and we can take data and process experts and do something there. It's a very trivial thing, but you see that with data and process assessment, you can really work with a customer. Matties: Is the strategy for companies to step in mostly to a digital factory, or are people say- ing, "We just want to turn it on and be com- pletely automated." And when we say auto- mated, process automation. Larger companies are the ones looking for total automation where smaller companies may be stepping. Do you see some division along the economics?