Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/929192
JANUARY 2018 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 63 they've got an eye on that machine to make sure that they're looking at the fiducial. So, this is from 00, and everything is determined from this point. We know everybody has a camera that's looking for that, right? So, why reinvent that multiple times for each piece of equip- ment? That's going to be a building block. We're creating all these building blocks that we can say, 'Oh, this piece of equipment needs a barcode reader. It reads barcodes, and it's looking for 00.' It's pulling those together, and now we can create the standard so that this is how we pull that information across from machine to machine. It's consistent across the board. If what we're calling a fiducial, then every piece of equipment's got to use that same terminology and the same criteria to describe that block. It's that commonality at a low level, at the right level, so we're not forcing people to tell them how necessarily to do things. So, what information needs to be portrayed? When I worked at Lucent, we used to talk about the 'whats' and the 'hows', and the whats are what you need to have at a lower level, so that you can standardize. Everybody can agree to that, everybody knows that a product has an ID. We want to standardize on that ID and say, 'this is the ID.' Every board has the point zero, the starting place where we zero out from, so all my dimen- sions are from this point forward. Everybody agrees to that, so we're going to make sure that defini- tion is the same across the board. By doing that, you can then build upon it, but you're still not inhibiting innovation on the software provider or the machine vendor to do things differently, or even the OEM. There's still an opportunity for them to make improvements or adjustments, or they can decide what information they want to maybe feed upstream to keep track of qual- ity, production, or for whatever reason. It still allows everybody to do things differently when you get down to the 'hows.' How they do it, it may all vary, but if we're communicating the same language across the board, it's going to make life so much easier for everybody. Las Marias: CFX aims to provide or enable true plug and play interoperability of the equip- ment, device, and the software. Jaster: That is our goal. Las Marias: So far, what have been the chal- lenges in that aspect? We're dealing with a lot of vendors here. Jaster: Yes, and somehow, I got lucky. I don't know what I did, but my vendor support has been great from day one. I think part of it was that I went into the very first meeting and said, 'This is for you. We want to do what is right for the industry. We've got no precon- ceived ideas. We want it to be not non-tool spe- cific. It's not like you're going to have to go off and buy v endor A's product, or use a particular product.' I think it helped because I do have manufac- turing and design experience, and that helped me a bit in communicating to folks. Because I've been there, and I've actually had to run Mylar tapes to run sequencings machines for through-hole components and fig- ure out what's the best way to lay- out and insert those parts on the board. Been there, done that, and I understand the complexities of the shop floor. It's only gotten more and more so as the industry has evolved. Part of it was being in the right place at the right time. I had help from my chairs in pulling the right people into that room, and I cannot say enough about my three chairs: Jason Spera from Aegis Software, Mark Peo from Heller Industries Inc., and Mahi Duggirala from flex. The three of them are wonderful. They're open and they're willing to listen to all ideas. They're not there pushing an agenda. Sometimes, we've had a meeting or two where people were kind of pushing an agenda, IPC APEX EXPO 2018 PRE-SHOW SPECIAL COVERAGE