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80 SMT Magazine • December 2017 by Stephen Las Marias I-CONNECT007 Chandran Nair is the vice president for Asia Pacific at National Instruments, a provider of automated test systems and virtual instrumen- tation software. In an interview during their re- cent National Instruments Technical Sympo- sium, Nair explains how the Industry 4.0 vision will change electronics manufacturing. He ex- plains key technology enablers that would drive the evolution of manufacturing processes, and how a platform-based approach can help im- prove test and measurement. Las Marias: How will Industry 4.0 take electron- ics manufacturing processes to the next level? Chandran Nair: Industry 4.0 is a massively used term, and people have different views for that. But one of the common themes in Industry 4.0 as we move forward is that at the very least, it will help asset management because people will be able to build machines that can communi- cate with each other in the factory floor. It will help in things like utilization and predictive maintenance, that will in turn reduce down- time, increase efficiency, and reduced wastage. At the next level, it will be the connectivi- ty to the enterprise that will enable things like data analytics, higher level integration with the IT systems—the convergence of operational technology and information technology—and people will be able to get real-time information on things like productivity. You can even think as far as being able to make customizable prod- ucts based on customer needs. Las Marias: What are the key technology en- ablers for this Industry 4.0 vision? Nair: Each level will be really having smart ma- chines—machines that can communicate with each other and communicate with the enter- prise. It is powered by the increase in process- ing power, in the ability to use heterogenous processing systems, increase in the capability of system level software to be able to talk to mul- tiple processing systems that are requiring data, and then finally, the ability to do analysis and the ability to provide insights based on all these data that are being collected. INTERVIEW