Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1228683
36 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2020 ment usage with simulation, planning, sched- uling, and analytics. Johnson: There's yet another silo that's outside the scope of this conversation: the front end and the business practices. Matties: Because it's all going to start with the way that the job enters into the factory. Reuven: Yes. Matties: What questions do you get about front-end work in your workshops? Reuven: It's connected to the end-to-end vision, which is the reason why Siemens acquired Mentor. The first thing is that they understand that now electronics are in almost every prod- uct. You cannot say this is electronics, and this is a mechanical product. Siemens had a lot on the mechanical side, and Mentor Graphics has all expertise and solutions together with what we do at our division at Valor because we cover everything. We now have new part- ners in Siemens and two new products; the first one is the MES for electronics, and the second one is the integration between engi- neering to PLM. We have the design tool, and then it goes to design for manufacturing. This is the part where you process everything, sim- ulate it, and check if it can be manufactured in the way that it was designed; then, you go to the process engineering part. This is the part where you take it, start to crunch it, and check if you can do it with this machine or another one. You also run a virtual simulation. You manufacture it, iden- tify some issues in advance, and say if it's not testable. "I thought that I would be able to easily test it." Only then, assuming you use this end-to- end approach, can you pub- lish all your plans, including everything that you did, and Reuven: We also talk to that level, not just the data acquisition. Matties: When you look at that lights-out level of automation, there is a lot of front-end input and engineering before the job even hits the factory floor because you're going to have to set all those parameters up front. When the barcode hits, the machine understands what it needs to do. What sort of investment are peo- ple putting in the front end of their factories for a digital manufacturing environment? Reuven: It varies a lot. As I mentioned earlier, we have different types of customers. Some of them have global IT and innovation groups, and they take it in this direction, while some of them want you to do everything. Matties: But do you see an increasing empha- sis in the digital factory on hiring the front-end workers to interpret the data coming in and making sure that it fits into their manufactur- ing ecosystem? Reuven: We see that more and more, slowly. I think it's because it's hard to find or train them, not because they don't want to. Matties: Is that the employee of the future? Reuven: You could say that. The employee of the future will know how to maximize equip-