Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/817722
86 SMT Magazine • May 2017 the plug-and-play approach of the Mentor IoT Manufacturing technology. You take the box, you connect it to the machine, you identify it immediately, and it hooks up. It's a very easy deployment solution and also, from an IT per- spective, you can monitor all of the boxes, so you know that all of the boxes are connected. In the past, somebody could come and stop the connection to the machine and play around with it. Now, IT immediately sees that there is no more connection on the box and they can call the guy in the shop-floor and say: 'What's going on? Why did you remove the box?' This really allows IT to control of the data collec- tion, and for the site manager, when he gets his OEE (overall equipment efficiency) numbers, he knows that this method is bulletproof and cor- rect because this is an independent box which is collecting the data. It's always connected and we really know the OEE. For the management of Phoenix Contact, this was very appealing in their desire to access very accurate OEE numbers so they can decide when they need more lines to extend their ca- pacity. Las Marias: Do these IoT boxes accommodate both new and legacy equipment? Manor: Yes. The idea is that we support all of the big players in this industry, all of the lead- ing pick-and- place machines and AOI ma- chines, and we can really put a box next to ev- ery machine. The box is versatile; if it's an in- telligent machine, users can connect via TCP/IP and an Ethernet cable to acquire the data. If it's an older machine, the customer can connect to a sensor, to scanners, to the light tower, and col- lect data from the peripherals around the ma- chine to have the full picture. This is also some- thing that Phoenix liked about it because not all lines are state-of-the-art. Everybody has old- er lines, legacy machines, buty they still want to collect the data. The box is dynamic enough to work with both the high-end machines and the latest machines, but also older machines which need more legacy kind of interfaces. Las Marias: Would you consider the IoT box a one- size-fits-all approach? Manor: No. We're going to have different box- es. We're going to have a box for the manual assembly stations. Definitely when it's a man- ual process, it needs to be a little bit different than where there's a machine. You might need a display or you might need some peripheral equipment to input data, so we're going to see more of that. We're going to be focused on the post-SMT stages, the manual assembly, the box- ing, the shipping, and the cabling, because our customers, at the end of the day, build an end- product. Whether it's an automotive infotain- ment system, whether it's some kind of aero- space equipment, whether it's a consumer elec- tronic, it has a screen, it has a PCB inside, it has cabling, it has plastics inside, and that's what they want to build. Customers are not interested in a solution which is very narrow and just answers their need on the PCB assembly. They're going to look for a box which can accommodate all of the differ- ent processes and that's where we're going with this. We're also going to see more promotion of industry-wide protocols like OPC, which is very popular in the CNC plastics/metal. We're going to see these kinds of protocols drifting into PCB assembly, to merge and converge all of the dif- ferent segments into one standard. Las Marias: Like an end-to-end solution. Manor: Exactly. Las Marias: Oren, how do you see this year pro- gressing in terms of Industry 4.0 or IoT? Manor: We're going to see more and more auto- mation and robotics. We already know that the robots are being used in the final assembly, but they're going to start moving more into the tra- ditional SMT area. So I expect we'll see more use of robotics for automation, for mountain feed- ers on wheels, wheels on feeders, feeders on car- riages, and carriages into machines. Currently, where we see a lot of human be- ings, we're going to see less people and more ro- bots. Definitely, I think this is a big trend, and the trend of more automation, especially in America with reshoring and this whole discus- sion about bringing manufacturing back to this MENTOR GRAPHICS: CONNECTING THE MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT