Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/921680
62 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2018 and we basically said, 'No, stop it. IPC doesn't allow commercialization.' We don't want people pushing their own agendas when it's product specific or vendor specific. Some of that came up, and the wonderful thing is that a good, strong, solid team of people pushed back at the right points in time. I'm not saying it happened a lot. It really has been a very good group to work with. They're very interested. At first, there may have been a little skepticism. Could we really keep it generic enough that everybody could use this? But when we came up with the building block approach, people thought that was unique and a great idea, so let's go for it. Probably the biggest problem we have in all of standards committees is that they're made up of volunteers. Our volunteers have been great, a lot of them have given it plenty of time, but there just never seems to be enough time. You always wish you had a little more time with folks where you could maybe get a little bit farther, a little bit faster. So, you're always limited by people's time that they can commit to a project. But let me reiter- ate, IPC has great volunteers. We are making great strides. We had our first meeting over in Germany at productron- ica. We've never done that before, but my colleague over there who runs some of the standards meetings, Andreas Ojalil, ran that meeting for me. We have a lot of our commit- tee members over there, so they're continuing to work it. People are excited because they see where this is going, and they see that this is going to be machine to machine, it's generic, and you don't have to use a particular message broker. You're not tied to any one competi- tor's tools. It's going to give you what we need without forcing you to do something you don't want to do. You're not giving away the secret sauce, which is critical. Las Marias: I think one big factor is the increas- ing trend towards Industry 4.0. This is a version of that when it comes to the factory floor in the electronics in the industry. Jaster: And that was part of it, too. When we started, we said we wanted it to address Indus- try 4.0, and everybody in that room said, 'Well, what's the definition of Industry 4.0? Because everybody's got a different definition.' That's one of the things that this team said, 'For this team's perspective, this is what we mean by Industry 4.0, this is our interpretation, and this how we're going to address it.' People agreed, so it may not fit some other models, but it's going to work for the folks who the standard is intended for. Las Marias: What about the legacy systems that are being used by manufacturers or elec- tronic assemblers? Do they have to install new systems or equipment? Jaster: They won't have to install new equip- ment. This is intended to work with all existing equipment, and it will, because it's at a high enough level that it will work. When it really is going to come into play is for the equip - ment manufacturers and the OEMs, and even the software providers. They now know if they work to this standard that it's going to be easier on implementation. With any standard, you don't have people going, 'Okay, we're going to cut it in tomorrow.' It doesn't happen that way. It's like with a software update in the CAD world. A CAD vendor comes along with an update for their program. A company will decide when they want to implement that. They may implement it on new designs, where you still have to have things around for old designs. IPC APEX EXPO 2018 PRE-SHOW SPECIAL COVERAGE