-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBox Build
One trend is to add box build and final assembly to your product offering. In this issue, we explore the opportunities and risks of adding system assembly to your service portfolio.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
Aegis on CFX and Hermes Efforts
July 10, 2018 | Barry Matties, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
The Connected Factory Exchange (CFX) specification is truly revolutionizing the PCB industry. Michael Ford, from Aegis Software, met with me for an interview during the SMT Hybrid Packaging show in Nuremberg, Germany, to discuss the impact of this collaborative effort, and how it differs from the Hermes Standard.
Matties: You're the European Marketing Director for Aegis Software. Can you give us a quick overview of the company?
Ford: Aegis is a modern software company. There are a lot of MES software solutions in the market based on older software technologies. We saw that digital, Smart factories and Industry 4.0 were coming, and with the limitations of current technology in the market, we knew that we had to invent something completely new. As a result, our FactoryLogix solution is a true digital platform made specifically with new technologies, such as Industry 4.0 and Smart factories, in mind, which gives us the means to generate more value through the use of digital information within a factory. We help customers become automated and achieve higher throughput, even with high-mix, and higher quality. FactoryLogix really is the digital factory enabler going forward.
Matties: The Connected Factory Exchange, CFX, is something that IPC is really driving. I know that Aegis is a big part of that.
Ford: Yes, six months ago, I would have told you there were approximately 150 companies working together within IPC on CFX. Then, a couple of months ago I would have said 200. Now it’s 320 and continues to climb. The industry has woken up to fact that there is added value that comes from the accessibility of data. And it must be good data, which carries value and meaning.
It's been really satisfying to see these companies—who are basically competitors with one other, including competitors within the software side—working together to achieve a common goal in CFX. I think the industry has been constrained by the lack of openness of data. It's all very well to develop bespoke, customized interfaces and functions, which for a lot of companies has been a fact of life, but we've always tried to do things in a standard way, “out of the box.” The key word is standard. The more standard something is, the more value you get for anything that you develop or purchase. This is the whole premise of getting the industry to work in a true Industry 4.0 environment, or just a smart factory environment. To work smart, basically.
Matties: Now, CFX is an open-source project, right?
Ford: Yes. It's an IPC consensus-based standard, open to anyone to see or contribute to. The key area is that within CFX, we standardize the language that is being spoken by all of the machines, so that they can freely interconnect any machine with any other machine, “plug and play.” That's what brings the value.
CFX is a unique standard in this respect. In the past, we've had standards that transfer data from point to point. Even the latest IoT methods simply gather data and send it, for example, to a cloud, which is basically treating a cloud like it's data “landfill.” You're just filling it full of garbage.
With CFX, we're looking at it like a mobile phone. I can buy an American cell-phone, and somebody else can buy a Chinese mobile phone, and the two phones will connect to each other. It's a completely standard network and infrastructure, such that anybody picking up the phone will hear my voice.
But when I start talking, it's a different story. I don't speak Chinese and the person I'm talking to might not understand English. The language that’s being spoken also needs to be part of the standard, in order that the data can be understood. For example, if any of the machines on the shop floor want to transfer data between each other, there has to be a common defined language that connects them. This is exactly what CFX provides, which no other standard has achieved.
We have hundreds of messages within CFX that define the exact content of data that's going to be useful for all machine vendors, manufacturers, and system providers like ourselves, to create the next generation of Industry 4.0 solutions. Each vendor will need to use only a small selection of the messages, that are appropriate to his equipment.
Matties: When we start talking about CFX, some people that I've talked to think of it as a product that you buy—that it's a product IPC is bringing to market and they're going to make a lot of money off of it.
Ford: If CFX were to cost any less, I would have to pay people to take it, because it's free! It's a consensus-based standard. It wasn't created by Aegis or any other single company. It was created by hundreds of different companies working together and it's being made available to everybody right now completely free of charge, from the IPC.
Matties: So, the standard defines how you bundle your data to communicate to the next piece of equipment or to the cloud, correct?
Ford: Exactly. It defines how you're going to get your data from your machine out there for people to utilize, and how other people's information is there for you to utilize, it is omni-directional
Matties: There's no software or anything that they have to purchase to take part in this?
Ford: No, not at all. The IPC have made it as easy as possible to adopt CFX, in the form of a Software Development Kit, which provides access to all of the messages within the standard. The SDK is also available directly from IPC, again completely free of charge, as part of the standard. It means that, for example, all the vendors taking part in the live demo today, with their 52 machines in all, had to do for this show floor demo, which are currently outputting CFX, was to embed this SDK into their machine software. Within an hour or two of development, machines were up and running and sending CFX messages out. Honestly, it could not have been any easier. We've gone to every effort to make sure that this standard reflects what people need in terms of the value it provides, as well as reducing the cost of implementation.
Matties: Another argument that I've heard is, "Data is a competitive advantage. Why do I want to standardize with the entire industry?"
Page 1 of 2
Suggested Items
HQ NextPCB of HQ Electronics Debut on the International Stage for Electronics Manufacture at IPC APEX 2024
05/01/2024 | PRNewswireHQ NextPCB of HQ Electronics, a leading Chinese-based multilayer PCB manufacturer and assembly house showcased its industrial prowess on the international stage for the first time at the IPC APEX Expo 2024.
IPC's Vision for Empowering PCB Design Engineers
04/30/2024 | Robert Erickson, IPCAs architects of innovation, printed circuit board designers are tasked with translating increasingly complex concepts into tangible designs that power our modern world. IPC provides the necessary community, standards framework, and education to prepare these pioneers as they explore the boundaries of what’s possible, equipping engineers with the knowledge, skills, and resources required to thrive in an increasingly dynamic field.
North American EMS Industry Down 4% in March
04/29/2024 | IPCIPC announced the March 2024 findings from its North American Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) Statistical Program. The book-to-bill ratio stands at 1.31.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: A Global Presence in PCB Manufacturing
04/29/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPORob DiGiovanni, VP of sales for the Americas at STARTEAM Global, discusses the company's global presence in PCB manufacturing. As he explains, the firm operates facilities across Europe, Asia, and North America, specializing in serving contract manufacturers in the automotive and medical industries. They emphasize quality and meeting OEM standards, focusing on offshore supply and non-Chinese factories in the North American market. The company has grown through acquisitions and rebranding to offer multiple products.
EIPC Issues Letter of Urgency
04/29/2024 | Alun Morgan, EIPCAlun Morgan, president of EIPC, issued a letter last week in an effort to raise awareness of the state of PCB manufacturing in Europe. He writes, "The European PCB manufacturing industry and its supply base has been steadily shrinking since the dot com crash at the start of the millennium. European demand for PCBs and assemblies has, however, continued to grow, thus creating an ever-widening gap between European domestic capacity and consumption. The risks posed by this imbalanced supply and demand pattern came into sharp focus during the Covid-19 pandemic which caused chaos in extended supply chains across the world and resulted in widespread shortages."