Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1545666
20 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2026 whole concept is specializing in bidirec- tional material flow: You put some of your components on the board, and some go back. It's everything from the software and hardware to accessories, feeders, storage, and so on. That's what we have built everything around. I was just at a customer here in Europe, and they do 100 NPIs per day. I've been in the business for 30 years, and I've never seen any- thing like it. That is a good example: If you work the process from A to Z and use our equipment, you can do some great stuff. You have to know what you're doing, though—ev- erything from the data flow from their customers, the whole Agilis feeder system, the material handling system, and the software. This customer shows you can get those results without investing crazy amounts of money. When we start talking about changeover optimi- zation, industry insiders understand there's signifi- cant potential for human optimization. There are many manual operations that need improvement. That involves adjusting the timing of your pro- cesses and equipment to optimize them. How is Mycronic helping with bidirectional flow? Helleday: Our feeders are quite small, and you can have hundreds of them at your kitting area. You can unload them in a couple of seconds, and they don't weigh anything. Because they are quite easy to handle, you can really do so efficiently. But the feeders don't go into our magazines straight away. Depending on the size of our bin, you can easily carry, say, 16 eight-millimeter components. If you have a station near the machine, that's where you can put components into the reus- able magazines. If you place the components in the wrong place in the machine, it won't matter because the ma- chine will self-optimize. Of course, you want to do it right so you get bet- ter performance. We also electrically verify the components before they're placed. You can choose to verify every component, or perhaps the first one in the reel. This mini- mizes the room for error in the changeover process. So, you're doing a verification on the line to make sure that there is no human error in the setup. Do you remove the previ- ous job the same way? Helleday: Yes, you put the bins in the magazine, then you connect the feeders to the end of the magazine facing the machine. To remove it, do the reverse: you can quickly load and unload. It's the flow in the factory, the flow of material, the flow of data. Those are the big things. In a traditional manual flow, the machine is stopped for the duration, up to many minutes. The process you're describing sounds like just a few seconds at the machine. Are operators doing prep away from the machine while it's running a different work order? Helleday: Yeah, for sure. Our machines are quite big; you can load a lot of components on them. If you need to change out everything, then we're talking maybe a few minutes. But for each, it's both quick and ergonomic. You must support that with software, programming component placement, or connecting to software that tracks your inventory. Tell me about that. Göran Frank: An optimal process re- quires more than just the machine; it relies heavily on how the cus- tomer works with the machine. We guide customers based on our extensive experience in running high-mix produc- tion. That's the core of each software component we offer. We help with best practices for running high-mix production. On the software side, the focus is on preparation and planning. It's prepar- Robert Helleday Göran Frank