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22 SMT Magazine • November 2015 coded or using binary formats in use at the time by most SMT machine vendors, as well as GEM- SECS. As with GEM-SECS, there was the ability with CAM-X to select the data that should be fil- tered that was available from the machines, but again, this applied to the common and some- what superficial area rather than the detailed proprietary data areas that ultimately clogged up the system. The SMT shop-floor information environ- ment resembles the Internet more in terms of massive amounts of unmanaged data than the structured approach of data belonging to Inter- net services such as on-line banking or shop- ping. This is a serious problem for those who would like to extend the industrial IoT to SMT. Significant change needs to happen for it to be viable. The first port of call would naturally be to ask the SMT machine vendors to consider the adoption of some standard through which all critical and useful information can be effi- ciently extended. However, the practice of us- ing proprietary communication software as a barrier to competition should be relaxed, as well as accepting that more detailed informa- tion about the machine and it's performance will be exposed, which can in theory be used to compare the performance between vendors. In the current highly competitive climate, this in itself is a tall order. There is then the extension of the support of the standard to the hundreds of thousands of existing SMT machines in the market, which will at least require development and applica- tion of software updates for them to conform to the new standard. Most likely in many cases, this would be more than just an upgrade to the software, as the capabilities of machines that have been in the market for many years may not currently have the capability to provide a complete set of data. The amount of work that would be necessary for machine vendors could be quite extreme and would carry with it little if any revenue. This is also a critical issue for SMT-related equipment, such as screen printers, reflow ovens, AOI, and ICT machines. More re- cent machines do have some communication capability, but it is nowhere near as fully devel- oped as that for the SMT machines. There are then the manual processes, which are also a key part of each PCB's flow through production, with tracking, material consump- tion, defect opportunity and discovery, all a part of the requirement for visibility, traceabil- ity, and control as part of the industrial IoT. The only mechanism for data collection from these stations today is simple effectively dumb terminals that can send key events to a central system, or it is back to manual data collection. There are actually many more manual points to consider in a PCB production operation than automated ones like SMT machines. Existing CAM systems that try to collect data from man- ual processes create in themselves a significant bottleneck and productivity loss, where delays are incurred waiting for the response from a central server (e.g., to confirm the WIP tracking request of each PCB into each process). The fact is that in a raw form, there is a massive amount of data related to events and status of processes and products on the PCB as- sembly shop-floor. Third-party software avail- able today does a very good job of hiding the complexity of gathering data, normalizing, and qualifying the specific meanings and pre- senting the result in an accurate and timely way so that it can actually be dependable and relied upon for advanced shop-floor control, such as lean, just-in-time material delivery. Progressing from this level today into an envi- ronment where, for example, production can be ultra-flexible to meet changing customer demand without suffering loss of performance is going to require the next generation of shop- floor data collection technology. Without some method to create standardized, normal- ized, and qualified data, in a format which is practical, secure, and absolutely reliable, the arrival of the industrial IoT to SMT and related production is going to be delayed, muted, and if not done in the right way, potentially down- right expensive for all involved. SmT michael Ford is senior marketing development manager with Mentor graphics corporation valor division. To read past columns, or to contact the author, click here. esseNTIaL pIoNeer's survIvaL GuIDe THe SmT INTerNeT oF THINGS—bACK To bASICS