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82 SMT Magazine • February 2016 Our vision and strategy is to try to get into this design to manufacturing flow everywhere and start connecting everything together. This is about connectivity and modularity that will enable manufacturers to decide what goes on each machine line of each factory. They don't need to go back to the ERP system. They can make their own decisions and say, "Okay, I'm in China, and I'm going to send this one to Brazil. They can do it there." This is about globaliza- tion, in a nutshell. Lavi Ben David: The discussion around design in Industry 4.0 is how to make the manufac- turing better, but once you get the design into manufacturing, eventually the manufacturer doesn't have a lot of space left. We want to make the design more intelligent and want to find more of the problems so when it goes to the manufacturers there are less mistakes and less chance that it will fail. In order to do that, you want to give feedback for the designer about the manufacturability of the processes— feedback on connecting the machines, collect- ing all the manufacturing data, and the result of the manufacturing process. By sending this back to the designer the design will be more in- telligent. This is where we think Industry 4.0 will also benefit the design process itself. Matties: Now when we look at materials though, the other huge benefit is reduction of cost, reduc- tion of inventory and less materials sitting be- cause instead of having material there 48 hours in advance, it's there 20 minutes in advance. Lavi Ben David: Yeah, and this is something that we've been doing for many years now. It's called material management, and basically this is something that we've done before Industry 4.0. This is where we have complete visibility of material across all manufacturing sites. We are also in a position where we can provide so- lutions for all generic equipment, regardless of which machines and tools you are using. With the visibility of the right materials and the scheduled work orders, we make sure that materials are kept in the warehouse and are de- livered just in time to the shop floor, just be- fore they need them. We have a customer site where all the materials are being delivered by robots, as they need it, to go into the manu- facturing line. The operator stays by the lines and they keep minimal manufacturing materi- als on the shop floor. When it is in inventory, we also form a transactional point of view and keep the material stock accurate in the supply chain management solution. The reordering mechanism is more efficient and provides huge savings on the materials. Hoz: Some expensive components have a very short life and expiration. If you don't mix work orders and use it properly and program it in ad- vance, so that you know exactly how to make the right order, you will lose money. It's not just talking about meeting some standards or that this is a nice trend that you need to adhere to, just look at the ROI. And of course, we also pro- vide you with all the compliance requirements coming from the guys that sit at the top of the food chain or their customers. Matties: When you order the material and man- age it the way that you do, on a percentage basis, what sort of advantage have you brought for a customer? Lavi Ben David: Close to 70% of the manufac- turing costs is the labor to materials. It's a big money saver. With production, we can reduce the materials spending by around 70–80%. This " it's called material management, and basically this is something that we've done before industry 4.0. this is where we have complete visibility of material across all manufacturing sites. " iNdustrY 4.0: creatiNg a staNdard