NEWMAN LAKE, WA – Hentec Industries/RPS Automation, a leading manufacturer of selective soldering, component lead tinning and solderability testing equipment, is pleased to announce the addition of Production Automation as their exclusive sales representative for their entire product line for the territory of Minnesota, Western Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa.

“We are pleased to have Steve Block of Production Automation join our sales team”, stated Tom Baro, North American Sales Manager for Hentec Industries/RPS Automation. Production Automation has a wealth of experience in the electronic assembly industry including precision dispensing, manual and robotic soldering, wave soldering and selective soldering, BGA rework and BGA re-balling, solder and solder paste, cleaning systems, and X-ray inspection systems.

“We are confident that Steve and Production Automation will advance our complete line of Vector and Valence selective soldering systems, Odyssey component lead tinning machines, as well as our Pulsar solderability testing and Photon steam aging equipment throughout their multi-state sales territory”, added Baro.

SILICON VALLEY – Zero Defects International [ZDI] has announced their participation as an exhibitor at the SMTA Boise Expo and Tech Forum. It will be held at the Downtown Grove Hotel. The date of this event is Tuesday, April 11. The address of the Grove Hotel is 245 South Capitol Boulevard, Boise Idaho.

Foremost among the PCBA test and inspection products to be shown will be Viscom's AOI, X-Ray and SPI inspection equipment. The Viscom display will include updates on the very latest enhancements for each of these products. Also featured will be Europlacer's PCBA surface mount equipment.

Additionally, ZDI will have information on their flying-probe test services as well as reverse engineering and failure analysis services. Those attending include Michaela Brody, President and Paul Benke, CEO as well as Viscom sales manager Barbara Koczera. Other ZDI partners, for which information will be available include Velan, Tagarno, Epoch International, and Arcadia.

BANGKOK – During this week, the GPV Executive Leadership Team conducted the first in a row of Site Engagement Meetings in the new GPV. The management teams from the largest Asian locations met at GPV Electronics TH in Bangkok to discuss strong achievements during 2022, share best practices, and agree on the focus for the next four quarters that will help ensure the continued development of operational excellence and higher customer satisfaction.

The merger between GPV and Enics was completed in October 2022, and since then, the organisation has worked on integrating the two companies. Overnight, the new GPV grew to be the second-largest EMS company with European headquarters, with more than 8,000 dedicated people and an expected annual revenue of around EUR 1.1 billion.

“The Site Engagement Meetings is an important leadership platform in GPV, where we bring together the site responsible and their leadership teams from our various production units. We have clustered the sites into regional units and each meeting includes a joint dinner to acknowledge the positive outcome of socialising and interacting with colleagues across sites. Our history in Asia dates back to the 1980s, and we continue our strong presence in Asia where we produce and service our customers primarily with European and American headquarters,” says Bo Lybæk, CEO in GPV.

The meeting was held at the new mechanics factory just 10 days after the hand-over from the construction company on 17 March 2023.

The purpose of the Site Engagement Meetings is to update the Executive Leadership about site status and challenges for the coming period including country specific implications, operational challenges and organisation and factory setup. But it is also to secure a good understanding across the “new” organisation, share knowledge, build on relations, and ensure optimal use of resources.

“Apart from discussing specific initiatives, these meetings give us a unique insight into and understanding of each other across the various professions. This knowledge is included when making decisions on specific business improvement initiatives,” says Bo Lybæk.

At the meeting in Bangkok, each site highlighted what they are most proud to have achieved during the last 12 months.

“First of all, it was a great pleasure to hear the sites tell about their greatest achievements – what they were most proud about. It gave a better understanding across sites, and it served as inspiration. In particular, we had a constructive dialogue around networking capital and how we can bring down the high inventory rates,“ says Bo Lybæk.

The Site Engagement Meetings are held once a year with half a day for each of the participating sites.

Next SEM will take place on 23 and 24 May 2023 at GPV Electronics EE in Elva, Estonia and include the Estonian site together with the electronics sites in Nova Dubnica and Hlohovec, both situated in Slovakia.

NEUSS, GERMANY – The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), as a key enabler for Industry 4.0, is transforming the way data is handled in both the operational (OT) and information (IT) technology domains. It’s driving the emergence of new tools that can enhance high-level planning as well as maintenance and optimisation on the factory floor.

Standards Enhance Connectivity

IIoT embodies powerful, standardised machine-to-machine communication protocols. In surface-mount electronics manufacturing, these now provide a basis for meaningful communication between automated inline equipment and enterprise-level software like the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This is a welcome improvement because, historically, a lack of standards has held back the prospects for sophisticated communication between the various types of equipment and systems. Another benefit is that the changes in the way machines share data also now enable SMT-equipment vendors to enhance the software tools available to production teams working in the factory. Despite the general trend for greater automation and longer periods of unsupervised production, the complexity of SMT processes and equipment - which require frequent attention to maintain and optimise - means empowering those teams remains important.

Connecting OT and IT Domains

As one of the defining principles of Industry 4.0, connecting an organisation’s OT equipment with its IT systems aims to create a seamless link between factory equipment and the applications that run the business. It enables enterprise software like the MES to automate control of the manufacturing activities, while the data from factory equipment also drives analytical applications that inform business planning and provide the insights needed for continuous improvement.

IIoT technologies now bring standardised protocols and APIs into the mix, like JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and REST (REpresentational State Transfer) web-based API, that enable factory equipment and IT applications to communicate. Without these standardised platforms, compatibility between equipment and applications is far from plug-and-play, requiring labour-intensive and costly collaboration between different parties’ software development teams. By taking advantage of these protocols, equipment and applications can now share data through a relatively simple communication relay interface. The equipment manufacturer can create and maintain this interface without needing to customise it to enable communication with specific individual IT applications.

One example is YSUP-LINK, which is a part of Yamaha’s YSUP production support system. It uses REST to allow surface-mount equipment like a YSP10 automated printer and the latest YRM20 mounters in a production line to be connected to various third-party MES or other Industry 4.0 applications. It also handles controlling and collecting information from equipment in the production line and connects to intelligent component storage, as well as supporting the possibility to connect with third-party equipment and software in the future.

Effectively, it provides a connectivity package that enables equipment in the factory to send status information to the MES, which enables the MES to monitor and manage manufacturing activities automatically.

Multiple instances of machines such as the YRM20 can connect simultaneously into this environment, enabling YSUP-LINK to send reports to the MES, such as live status updates about the materials being used at each machine, or splicing reports when reels are changed.

There is also support for the legacy SECS/GEM interface that facilities communication between the new software and equipment such as semiconductor back-end processing environment, which uses established protocols. On the other hand, looking to the future, it’s ready for the incoming IPC-CFX connected factory exchange protocol (IPC-2591), which aims to establish a single standard for all aspects of managing data and communications in digital factories.

Enriching OT Communications

Yamaha’s production support system also includes a material information system, YSUP-MI, which centralises management of material information and makes this available to factory software tools for activities such as line monitoring and setup verification/navigation. This delivers advantages for production teams, such as accelerated response to operator requests for information about reels, and also enables faster data backup execution. Management is centralised thanks to real- time synchronisation between the material information system and enterprise IT systems.

In the factory, it is critical to ensure that operations teams are kept informed of equipment and production status, and that they are empowered to take corrective action when needed.

Taking advantage of the relay server, an operator working on one machine can send an instruction to all other machines in the line simultaneously. All machines can share basic operations such as running control and program switch, while the latest YRM equipment generations allow exchanges such as board loading, screen display, and machine/board status.

In addition, the YSUP software provides a live dashboard that delivers enhanced analysis to assist with real-time optimisation and troubleshooting. This tool includes analytical functions such as print-results analysis, placement-misalignment analysis, vision process support, loss cost aggregation, and enhanced reporting that support maintenance activities and help improve productivity.

There is also component-pickup analysis, which helps find and remedy the causes of common assembly defects. This has already delivered remarkable successes for some clients. By simultaneously visualising the rates of pickup errors per feeder and per head, the dashboard helped the team track down a pickup problem to an issue with splicing tape that could have taken about 6 hours to identify using traditional tools.

Similarly, another client has taken advantage of the dashboard information to prevent over 100,000 pickup errors every month, potentially saving between $12,000 and $120,000 per year in component losses.

Conclusion

IIoT technologies are enabling sophisticated plug-and-play communication between surface-mount equipment, factory software tools, and enterprise-level IT. On the one hand, this provides the long-awaited bridge between companies’ IT and OT domains, to automate production management and boost efficiency. On the other, it is providing the basis for enhanced factory software tools that increase visibility for equipment operators and accelerate troubleshooting and process optimisation to maximise productivity.