Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/817722
84 SMT Magazine • May 2017 organization, for you to develop all of these drivers is a challenge. The second thing we see is that the data is not 100% accurate. Let's say you have a driv- er, but you're missing a couple of events; you're 95% there. You don't trust it anymore. I go to factories and they say, "Yeah, we collect all the data," but then I see somebody counting reels. So I ask him, "If you're getting all of the data, why are you counting the reels?" "Uh, we have some glitches. We don't trust it 100%." We'll be in heaven when I don't see anybody count- ing reels anymore, because the machine knows exactly how many components are on that reel. It knows how many were there, it knows how many were placed, and how many were dropped, so there's no mystery. Now, if you tap into the data and collect all of it, you should know exactly how many com- ponents are there at the end of the shift. Still, people are counting because they don't fully trust their data collection systems because of the complexity. I think that's the main chal- lenge. Las Marias: And how is Mentor addressing those challenges for your customers? Manor: Mentor's been developing these inter- faces for about 15 years. We really have the knowledge of writing all of these interfaces, col- lecting all of the data, and testing it to know that we're 100% bulletproof. We've looked at all of the extreme use cases, we've looked at all of the scenarios, and we know that we're not miss- ing any data. We released a device, the Men- tor IoT Manufacturing solution, which aims to bridge this issue. It's not about selling a whole EMS system, but selling an application to col- lect data in real-time. Let's say you have a PC that's collecting data but is running some additional applications. Suddenly they're taking all of the CPU power and you don't have any more power. The idea with this box is that it's completely dedicated to data collection, so it's not going to miss any data. Also, if there is an IT issue and the server is down, it has data retention capabilities of up to 72 hours where it will store the data locally. Then, once IT fixes the server and the server is back up, IT restores connection and the server can communicate to the box and say, "I've been out for 20 hours. What did I miss?" "Here's the data." Our philosophy here is when you want to do traceability, you can have zero data loss be- cause, otherwise, what's the point in imple- menting traceability where you have hours dur- ing the day or during the week where you didn't collect any data? Now you have to do the recall, but you don't really know which boards you've got to recall. It's only effective if you have zero data loss and that's why we've put all of this ef- fort around this dedicated IoT box, which en- sures and protects the data we collect. Las Marias: Phoenix Contact recently implement- ed your IoT solution to their processing line. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Manor: Yeah. Phoenix Contact is definitely a big player and a big promoter of Industry 4.0 in electronics manufacturing. They have a very so- phisticated factory in North Germany. They've been using some of our solutions for a couple of years but they've migrated to this IoT envi- ronment because they do a lot of custom devel- opment. For their custom applications, the IoT box together with OML was very compelling to them to get all the data from their machines. Phoenix Contact then uses OML to get the data to their applications, which their internal IT or- ganization manages. They wanted the traceability data, the quali- ty data, the material data, but they wanted to be able to customize things, so this a perfect solu- tion for them. What was appealing for them is MENTOR GRAPHICS: CONNECTING THE MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT " It knows how many were there, it knows how many were placed, and how many were dropped, so there's no mystery. "