Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1275152
38 SMT007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2020 have not yet done towers, to improve the effi- ciency of their receiving process. Matties: With the tower, there's another ben- efit, which is the integrity of the component as it lives through storage and moves into the assembly line. Do you find that there's less handling, which is another advantage? Astle: The cases protect the components, but early on, if smaller CMs had a mix of consign- ment and turnkey parts—meaning the consign- ment was from their customer—they tended to just leave them in a box by the line. But when their customer found out they had a storage cabinet under lock and key, they said, "We want our parts in that storage as well—not just your turnkey parts, but our consigned parts." It's also a security thing, especially for con- signed parts from companies; they don't want other people seeing or taking parts. Matties: This would give them real-time access to their inventory and be able to see what's there and what's being moved because I'm assuming that there would be some remote access into the cabinet as well. Astle: Correct, and they have segregation soft- ware now, too. Black: If you have one tower, but you have a couple of customers who want their parts only used on their jobs, the segrega- tion software reserves that part only for that user's jobs. If somebody tries to pull that reel for somebody else's job, that machine won't do it. It will reject it and send an error message, saying, "This part is reserved for this customer only. That hasn't been added just in the last year." Astle: Essegi is very flexible and quick on innovating and develop- ing. I enjoyed working with them over the past few years. Matties: What's been the shift in attitude toward the digital factory? Do you see more and more requirements or requests around that? Black: Yes. People are not sure what form it's going to take or how deep they're going to plunge in, especially the smaller companies. But now everybody wants to make sure that their machines and systems communicate with each other, and they're open to any improve- ments that can be done in the future. That is becoming more and more prevalent. You can see it in advertising in all forms. You rarely see an ad that doesn't say "Industry 4.0 ready" or "Industry 4.0 compliant." Matties: There's a lot of talk about the bene- fits of 4.0, but I'm not sure that there's a clear path forward for talent, skill set or experts to be in these factories to implement them. They rely more on you, the suppliers, for advice and guidance. Do you see that as the case as well? Black: A lot of the sales process with the auto- mated storage towers centers on education. A lot of customers are not aware of all the pos- sibilities and what it can do. When you sit down with a customer and start to go through things, many are surprised at what type of integration they can have and how they can have data at their fingertips. A good example is inventory counts. Most placement machines have the ability to count down as they use the parts on a reel. At the end of a run, if a reel is pulled off the machine and returned to the tower, we can ask the machine to ask the placement line, "How many did you use?" It will give us two numbers: the number of parts placed, and the number of parts mispicked. By adding those two together, the customer can even enter a contin- ISM Incoming Material Station.