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32 SMT Magazine • July 2016 work out the communication on a specifically agreed basis, which appeared to be unique for each vendor Significant development resource is needed in this instance, which perhaps is acceptable for companies of this size. But what about the reliability and the degree of on-going mainte- nance, as older machines are phased out and newer automation introduced? The IT resourc- es have to be maintained indefinitely, as do the close tie-ins to the machine vendors who cooperate. This is perhaps the most expensive way to achieve shop-floor communication, through "brute force," with the underlying expectation that costs will reduce as commu - nication capabilities and standards improve. Both Flex and Foxconn are to be commended in their achievement, which to the rest of the industry may seem like a fairy tale, but is in fact real, with real associated benefits. What is less clear so far is how these benefits compare to the initial and continued investment of the projects. Application of an Existing Generic Standard Standards such as CAM-X and SECS-GEM were introduced about 15 or 20 years ago, a time when SMT operations were a lot simpler and more rigid than they are today. In particu- lar, the IPC-sponsored CAM-X was the first real standard that featured an infrastructure, a pro- tocol, and, to some extent, a definition of stan- dard machine events. The attraction of CAM- X to some companies was enough of a trigger to start them looking at the standardization of shop-floor communication. All seemed to go well for a short time, until CAM-X had some critical weaknesses in the network bandwidth required to support a wasteful infrastructure and protocol and in the ability to support any- thing beyond the simplest of commonly de- fined event attributes. Rather than continue to work to refine the standard, the IPC seemed to let it go as commer- cial entities sprung up, offering hardware and software solutions based on CAM-X and cus- tomizations, which meant that CAM-X was no longer the standard it was meant to be. Instead of every process getting connected as standard, significant amounts of customization were needed on top of the purchase of what were becoming proprietary solutions. This situation seems to have "poisoned" the market away from believing that a real, complete, and open standard could ever exist. If the IPC could not do it, then who could? Key companies who invested heavily in these broken standards now find themselves with mo- mentum but going nowhere. Once again, com- mercial entities have come in to take advantage of the situation, offering upgrades to better and more modern protocols, such as XMPP, which although superior in many ways, is seen to be somewhat unreliable in their definition, already with a multitude of variations. The result is an endless pattern of returning to square one; as new equipment comes in, communication ca- pability needs development, with endless main- tenance, a real and substantial revenue stream for the commercial providers of solutions based on older standards. However, the choice to implement the stan- dard is still smart, with benefits achieved before the Internet of Manufacturing was ever con- ceived. These companies are the true pioneers of the industry, and are the ones likely to get arrows in their backs as history shows. Respect is due to the many people and companies who made it happen; but they must now be thinking that they are like aircraft, endlessly circling the airport, unable to find a way to land. INDUSTRY 4.0: MAKING THE FIRST MOVE " Significant development resource is needed in this instance, which perhaps is acceptable for companies of this size. But what about the reliability and the degree of on-going maintenance, as older machines are phased out and newer automation introduced? "