Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/674146
50 SMT Magazine • May 2016 ly your technology is also addressing that particu- lar issue. Bouchard: Yes. Another strong industry focus right now is on cost of ownership in the pro- cess. BTU has other reflow oven suppliers that are highly focused on reducing cost of owner- ship. If you're affecting downtime, you're af- fecting your cost of ownership. Las Marias: I read something about your systems being Industry 4.0-ready. Can you please elaborate that? Bouchard: Sure. There isn't necessarily a stan- dard out there for Industry 4.0, and frankly there's a lot of hype in the industry about it and for the right reasons. After studying this, we came to recognize that BTU actually has already in place a number of the elements that's re- quired to support Industry 4.0. We have a num- ber of interfaces that are available to commu- nicate with host computer systems. We have a number of the data collection services that will be required for Industry 4.0 for the machine data and making that available to a host or to an Industry 4.0 compliant factory management system. We're well-positioned and have been working on things for many years that are cur- rently available for Industry 4.0. Las Marias: How do you see that impacting the overall manufacturing process? Bouchard: I think it's a little different for every piece of equipment in the line. The reflow oven, I think, is a little less impactful, so to speak, in terms of the amount of data that will come from the reflow oven versus the pick and place ma- chine or screen printer, for example. In terms of impact, I think the scale is fairly high for the more intensive processes. For the reflow pro- cess, I think there's certainly room and oppor- tunity for moving in more automated systems, and self-correcting systems and intelligence in the reflow oven that can feed that information up into Industry 4.0 compliant systems. Las Marias: What other technology development should we expect from BTU? Bouchard: There is only so much that we can share at this point. We're in a mature market from the technology point of view. What we are looking at is really some opportunity that really not a lot of folks have started to explore. That REducing SEtuP tiME to PRovidE MoRE uPtiME in PRoduction Figure 1: Reducing set-up times minimizes operator errors in setting up the oven and improves yield.