Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/948150
16 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2018 been in the process control end of the pool, and it's just in these last couple of years where we've realized that under the roof of process control, we're touching loads and loads of data. If we can develop a delivery system, and then record it, it's a value-adder for our customers. This evolution has gone on over the last 36 months, or so. Matties: Well, what you're creating, though, is soft- ware that presumably could work for any solu- tion, right? Forsythe: Right, funda- mentally there's a sensor in the system that's doing the right sensing, the concentration measure - ments. The latest systems we have introduced are pretty much product- agnostic, though, while there are certain tech- nologies that won't work, most of the technolo- gies from most of the people in the market will successfully measure the concentration. So, whether that will be true across the board or not is unknown at this point, but with the latest sensor technology, it is known. Yes, we might be willing to do that for this sort of stuff as well, because we think this data delivery system is something that customers need and want, and the tooling that we've put in place to capture that data and relay it is, we think, a raw winner for our customers. Matties: Are you programming all your soft- ware in-house? Forsythe: We're doing it in-house in Nashville, Tennessee, where our headquarters and R&D center is. Matties: So it's all under your control. That's makes a big difference, doesn't it? Forsythe: Well, in the beginning it's hard. But once you figure things out and move forward, it also allows you to be very hands-on. Our approach to things is to try to understand the inner workings of hidden mechanisms, because that allows you to advance the tech- nology at a rapid rate. How do you get to the next generation if you don't really know what the other one did? So, we are believers and investors in bringing this sort of product development in-house for our customers' mission- critical needs. If they have a mission-critical problem, rest assured that we also have a mission- critical problem, and we both win if we can help solve it quickly with robust, reliable control systems and rich data sets. Matties: And it was a wide open gap. Forsythe: Yes, and while there are others that do it a bit, we tend to be the ones who do it the most. Matties: Now you have this great tool; people can access data, and it looks at a lot of differ- ent points of data that they can extract. You're only creating a new business here. Forsythe: Well, it's certainly a piece of our puzzle, and we looked at it from several perspectives even just in our cleaning space. There's operational cleaning where people are cleaning their assemblies. There's stencil clean- ing, and there's maintenance cleaning. Those are all cleaning, but they're different. If I'm not worried about the part, maybe I'm cleaning an oven. Well, there's a different standard, there's a different value add for the customers made perhaps a bit less. So, while they're similar businesses, they're different because the driv- ers are different. This is just another one of those that's essential to cleaning. We're stay- ing very focused on the cleaning zone. Matties: But what happens is that that data now needs to integrate into their company-wide