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IPC Insights
We Need to Talk. And So Do Our Machines
December 31, 1969 |
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
By Dieter Bergman, IPC
IPC is an organization that serves the electronics industry in many ways, but when people think of IPC, one word probably comes to mind: standards. The work of developing standards involves thousands of people, and only a few of them are IPC staff members. Most of the work is done by engineers and managers from the approximately 2,700 member companies, people who offer their time and expertise to enable the industry to function more efficiently and effectively.
The work of committees in developing standards is an obvious communications challenge. Committee members must overcome the biases and assumptions of their own culture, both national and corporate, and use language that is simple enough for everyone to understand, yet specific and detailed enough to create a standard that can support, rather than hinder, the industry.
Even more daunting than the challenges humans face when they attempt to communicate are the challenges machines must overcome when they try to communicate. Enabling machines on electronics production lines to communicate better was the mandate behind IPC-2501, "Definition for Web-based Exchange of XML Data." Developed by the CAMX Frameworks Communication Committee, it specifies the governing semantics and an XML-based syntax for shop-floor communication between electronic assembly equipment and associated software applications. The purpose of the standard was "to outline the communication architecture supporting XML messages and to define the choreography between sender and receiver."
Production line managers might not use the word "choreography" every day, but that term envisions the electronics production line as analogous to a closely coordinated, intricately scripted dance line one misstep and the whole line goes down. Rhythm, timing, and strict observance of the rules laid down by the director make the line a beautiful thing to watch, where the many move as one.
IPC-2501 doesn't let anyone forget what those rules are. Section 2, "Interpretation," makes one word perfectly clear: "Shall, the emphatic form of the verb, is used throughout this standard whenever a requirement is intended to express a provision that is mandatory. Deviation from a shall requirement is not permitted, and compliance with the XML syntax and semantics shall be followed without ambiguity..." That does not leave a lot of room for improvisation by the software developers, manufacturing application programmers, IT professionals, or process engineers who are the intended audience for the standard.
As rigid and uncompromising as the standard sounds, it is absolutely necessary that machine communication be that tightly controlled. Even a tiny bit of slack in the machine communications discipline leads to downtime, rework, and scrap on the material side, and frustration or worse on the human side of electronics production.
IPC committees avoid creating standards that would throttle the creativity of the bright and hard-working people in our industry. The goal is just the opposite, to allow the collective intelligence and ambitions of professionals in all disciplines in the electronics industry to work together smoothly.
Dieter Bergman is director of technology transfer at IPC Association Connecting Electronics Industries. Contact him at dieterbergman@ipc.org.