Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

The Industrial Transformation Asia Pacific (iTAP) Conference is taking place at the Singapore EXPO on 22-24 October, 2019. We invite you to visit the Cimetrix booth #1K21 in the Singapore Pavilion. Cimetrix and our partner Electrotek will be on hand to discuss your Smart Manufacturing needs. There are many industry terms that you may be wondering exactly how they apply to you. Whether it's "Who is Cimetrix?", or "What does Industry 4.0 mean for me?", we have answers to your questions! See the list of items below that we will be on hand to discuss. 

• Industry 4.0/Smart Factory
  • Basics
  • Terminology
  • Trends in I️ 4.0
• I4.o Applied to SMT Processes: Data with SEMI Standards
  • Explanation of SECS/GEM | SMT-ELS | And other SMT Standards
  • Six Sigma Black Belt Lessons
• Cimetrix Company Overview
• Cimetrix Sapience Smart Factory Platform
  • How our Platform Sapience, uses standards to provide data

Cimetrix® Sapience is an extensible platform used to connect varying factory equipment within a single event-driven framework. Sapience provides rapid-deployment tools for factories to mine the treasure trove of data available from shop floor equipment, driving actionable insights for optimal decision-making.  Manufacturers, OEMs and 3^rd-party developers use Sapience to gain access, through the web, to all kinds of factory equipment without having to understand the details of the myriad of shop-floor communications protocols. 

We hope to see you at our booth any time during the show, or you can schedule a meeting with us ahead of time by clicking the link below.

The TPCA show is coming soon and we will be there! You can read about it now in Chinese or below in English

TPCA（臺灣印刷電路板協會）2019年展會即將舉行，Cimetrix很高興能連續第三年參展！展覽將于十月二十三日至二十五日在臺北南港展覽中心舉行。我們邀請您#J-132參觀我們的展位。 

今年的TPCA展會的關鍵亮點之一將在PCB智慧製造論壇上舉行——"PCBECI機器應用互聯網引領智慧製造之路"。新的 PCBECI 標準是特色，Cimetrix 將宣佈我們已經在我們的 CIMConnect 設備連接產品和我們的設備測試合規性測試中支援此標準。

"通過符合成熟的半導體設備通信標準，臺灣PCB行業在全球同行中處於領先地位，利用PCBECI作為全球PCB行業智慧製造標準，有效解決了多樣化的設備通信標準。"

PCBECI論壇將于2019年10月24日（星期四）930至12：00在臺北南港展覽中心R402AB舉行。 

TPCA 展會彙集了 PCB 製造商 SMT 製造和測試設備供應商，預計將有來自 50 多個國家的約 4000 名參觀者參加。展區將有400多家參展商和1,400多個展位。 

Cimetrix 再次很高興成為本次展會的一部分，我們期待討論我們支援智慧製造和 PCBECI 標準的創新軟體產品如何滿足您的設備通信需求。您可以在展會期間到我們的展位停留，或提前預約。

The TPCA (Taiwan Printed Circuit Board Association) 2019 show is coming soon and Cimetrix is excited to be exhibiting for the third year in a row! The show will be held at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center from October 23-25. We invite you to visit us at our booth #J-132.

One of the key highlights in this year’s TPCA show will take place at the PCB Smart Manufacturing Forum – “PCBECI Internet of Machines Applications lead to the smart manufacturing path.” The new PCBECI standard is featured, and Cimetrix will announce that we already support this standard in our CIMConnect equipment connectivity product and our EquipmentTest compliance tester.  

“By complying with the mature semiconductor equipment communication standards, the Taiwan PCB industry takes the lead among its global peers as they utilize PCBECI as the worldwide PCB industry Smart Manufacturing standard, effectively solving the problem of diverse equipment communication standards.“

The PCBECI forum will be held on Thursday, October 24, 2019, from 9:30 – 12:00 at R402AB in the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.

The TPCA show brings together PCB manufacturers SMT manufacturing and test equipment suppliers and expects about 4,000 visitors from over 50 countries. There will be over 400 exhibitors and more than 1,400 booths in the exhibition area.

Cimetrix is once again happy to be a part of this show, and we look forward to discussing how our innovative software products that support Smart Manufacturing and the PCBECI standard can help with your equipment communication needs. You can stop by our booth during the show, or schedule an appointment ahead of time.

The 31^st annual APC Conference is coming up later this month (October 28-31), and will be held at the Embassy Suites Riverwalk in the scenic and historic setting of San Antonio, Texas.

This conference is one of the longest-running events specific to the semiconductor manufacturing industry, and always features speakers and topics that are germane to the industry’s leading practitioners of equipment/factory data collection, analysis, optimization, and control.  This year’s agenda promises more of the same – click here for a closer look at the details.

Specifically, as the automotive industry’s use of semiconductors continues to grow in anticipation of self-driving cars and their supporting infrastructure, the first keynote address from Steve Frezon of NXP Semiconductors (“Automotive Semiconductor ZERO DEFECT Enablement”) highlights the challenges that automotive customers place on the wafer fabs. A second keynote by Dr. Ben Rathsack of Tokyo Electron America (“SMART Tools: Intelligent Controls in Semiconductor Manufacturing”) focuses on the implications of the global Smart Manufacturing initiative for equipment suppliers, which has been a consistent theme of the conference under a variety of monikers since its earliest days.

The rest of the Technical Sessions Agenda includes presentations, posters, and exhibits across the semiconductor value chain: sensor and subsystem providers, software suppliers, equipment manufacturers, universities, standards organizations, and semiconductor IDMs and foundries. Given the importance of equipment connectivity and control across the product and technology spectrum of these companies, Cimetrix will participate directly as it has for many years. Alan Weber, VP of New Product Innovations, will present a summary of a chapter (“Semiconductor Smart Manufacturing: An Evolving Nexus of Business Drivers, Technologies, and Standards”) in a soon-to-be-published 2-volume book on Smart Manufacturing. He will also present material jointly developed 1) with SK hynix on customer-driven automation requirements development, and 2) with SEMI Japan, Applied Materials, and others on new standards for flow shop style manufacturing, such as semiconductor back end and PCB assembly.

Central Texas can be a beautiful place to be in late October, so mark your calendars today and plan to join us in San Antonio!

The Cimetrix Resource Center is a great way to familiarize yourself with standards within the industry as well as find out about new and exciting technologies. 

Our resource center features information about equipment connectivity and control, data gathering, GEM (SECS/GEM), EDA/Interface A, and more. These standards are among the key enabling technologies for the Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 global initiatives that are having a major impact on the electronics assembly, semiconductor, SMT and other industries. Manufacturers and their equipment suppliers must be able to connect equipment and other data sources, gather and analyze data in real time, and optimize production through a wide variety of applications.

The many presentations featured in our resource center provide in-depth coverage from Cimetrix expert's presentations at many different conferences and expos around the world. Some of our most popular presentations are below.

• Getting the Most from the GEM Standard
• Addressing Connectivity Challenges of Disparate Data Sources in Smart Manufacturing
• Standards-based Multi-Source Data Collection in the Smart Manufacturing Era
• Smarter Manufacturing through Equipment Data-Driven Application Design

Be sure to stop by our Resource Center any time or download the presentations directly from the links in this posting.

Last week was SEMICON Taiwan, and we left the show feeling very confident about the industry in Taiwan over the next few years. We were happy to meet with current clients, make new contacts, and participate in SEMICON in a variety of ways.

Cimetrix continues to strengthen its relationship with SEMI through our global participation and leadership in SEMI Standards meetings, as we have now done in Taiwan. Richard Howard, a Cimetrix director, and co-chair of the SEMI NA Security Task Force attended the Taiwan Computer and Device Security (CDS) task force meeting at the invitation of the Taiwan task force leadership and SEMI staff. The purpose of the meeting was to have a face-to-face discussion of how the regional task forces from Taiwan, North America and Japan could work together to define standards that address security in the microelectronic manufacturing industry. The principal goal of this meeting was to gain alignment between North America and Taiwan on an effective approach for defining these standards. Together we agreed that the best way forward was to develop a suite of standards, much like the GEM 300 and EDA standards, that subdivide this broad domain into discrete areas with specific objectives. Specifically, the international teams jointly decided to address equipment and device security by breaking out these standards separately. In this way, the global community can work simultaneously on standards development and eliminate duplication of effort. Participating in standards meetings and task forces is always a great learning experience.

The SEMICON Taiwan theme this year was “Leading the Smart Future,” and this sentiment was echoed throughout the exhibits, seminars, and special events. There was Smart Transportation, Smart Manufacturing, Smart MedTech, and even Smart Data. In recent years, Cimetrix has been a regular sponsor and participant in the Smart Manufacturing areas of SEMICON shows, and this year, our booth exhibit was in the Smart Manufacturing Pavilion. In addition. Alan Weber, VP of new Product Innovations, spoke on the topic of “Connectivity Challenges for Smart Manufacturing” at the Meet-the-Experts area of the pavilion. Speaking at SEMICON is always a great opportunity, and we are happy to share the presentation material with you here.

As always, our Cimetrix team was excited to once again be an exhibitor at the SEMICON Taiwan show. We are already looking forward to SEMICON Taiwan 2020!

Today is our next edition of the Cimetrix Book Club. Our employees are always striving to develop their skills, share information, and keep up to date with the industry. Part of this effort includes an employee book club that involves many of our team members each month. We will cover some of their favorites from time-to-time here on our blog!

Today's book is called "Don't Make Me Think (Revisited)" by Steve Krug. The book review is by Gabe Hanson, a Software Engineer based in Salt Lake City, UT, USA.

This short but dense book was written to guide software developers through their journey of building user interfaces. While it was targeted specifically for web and mobile user interfaces, the general topics and suggestions presented will benefit almost anyone developing any kind of software. The general theme of the book ties directly with the title: make the end user think as little as possible while using your software.

The book covers topics ranging from general design philosophies, to optimal user interface experiences, and even more nuanced topics like accessibility considerations and color themes. Each of the 13 chapters presents common usability issues found throughout the stages of building a website or mobile application, and discusses how a developer might approach mitigating such problems. For example, chapter 6 discusses how one might build a website that is easy to navigate by using the concepts of "street signs" to help guide the user through your website. This chapter explains simple ways of constructing web pages with easily-locatable buttons and other kinds of navigation techniques to prevent the user from getting lost, frustrated, and eventually leaving your website.

We found chapters like these most valuable because these same ideas can apply to almost every piece of software we build for the manufacturing industry. Given the potentially complicated nature of navigating through an equipment's control software, it is important we design our software to be easy to use and navigate. Not just for convenience, but to reduce user error - something that can help avoid mistakes costing potentially millions of dollars.

Not only was reading the book educational, but it presented itself in a very entertaining and engaging way. Most of the pages contain humorous illustrations and simple diagrams to explain the points the author makes. One could argue the book itself incorporates some of the lessons it teaches, by helping the reader easily digest the points presented; to not "make them think so hard" about the complicated and subjective process of designing a simple yet complex piece of software.

I can safely say this book is recommended for any and all software teams aiming to build software that is easily usable for all sorts of end-users. Our team found this book to be an excellent guide in constructing software that is not only useful but easy to use.

SEMICON Taiwan 2019 is coming soon and we will be there! You can read about it now in Chinese or below in English

台灣SEMICON將於9月18日至20日在台灣台北的TaiNEX 1（南港展覽館1館）舉行，主題為“引領智能未來”。這與Cimetrix的業務完全符合，我們將在智能製造業展出大廳位於一樓J3056展位。我們邀請所有人來拜訪我們的展位（或者您可以在演出前的任何時間安排會議)!

Cimetrix將在台灣SEMICON展示我們的最新產品和尖端技術。這包括我們的設備控制平台演示以及我們最新的設備測試產品（Cimetrix EquipmentTest），EDA產品和GEM連接產品。

Cimetrix EquipmentTest有Basic和Pro兩種版本，可滿足各種客戶類型的需求。您可以在此處了解有關EquipmentTest的更多信息。

Cimetrix還將帶來幾個不同領域的專家，以回答有關行業標準，合規性和產品信息的任何問題。專家將在GEM（SECS / GEM），GEM300和EDA /接口A等領域提供。您還可以聽到我們的新產品創新副總裁Alan Weber就“智能製造的連接挑戰”這一主題發表演講。 SEMI於9月19日星期四上午11點10分與專家展位（J3258）會面。

SEMICON台灣由台灣對外貿易發展委員會（TAITRA）和台灣半導體產業協會（TSIA）共同組織。

我們祝福您在展會上取得成功，並希望在那裡見到您！

SEMICON Taiwan will take place on September 18-20 at TaiNEX 1 (Nangang Exhibition Center) in Taipei, Taiwan with the theme “Leading the Smart Future.” This is perfectly aligned with the business of Cimetrix, and we will exhibit in the Smart Manufacturing hall at booth J3056 on the first floor. We invite everyone who is at the show to stop by and see what’s new with us (or you can schedule a meeting at any time before the show)!

Cimetrix will showcase our latest products and cutting-edge technologies during SEMICON Taiwan. This includes our equipment control platform demonstrations as well as our latest equipment testing product (Cimetrix EquipmentTest), EDA products and GEM connectivity products.

Cimetrix EquipmentTest comes in both Basic and Pro versions to meet the needs of various client types. You can learn more about EquipmentTest here.

Cimetrix will also bring experts in several different fields to answer any questions you may have regarding industry standards, compliance and product information. Experts will be available in areas such as GEM (SECS/GEM), GEM300 and EDA/Interface A. You can also hear Alan Weber, our VP of New Product Innovations, speak on the topic of “Connectivity Challenges for Smart Manufacturing” at the SEMI Meet the Experts Booth (J3258) on Thursday, September 19 at 11:10 a.m.

SEMICON Taiwan is being co-organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) as well as the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA).

We wish you success at the exhibition and hope to see you there!

In the EDA Best Practices blog series, we have discussed choosing a commercial software platform, using that package to differentiate your data collection capabilities and how to choose what types of data to publish. In this post we will review why you should choose to provide an E164-compliant equipment model.

What is E164?

Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA) - also referred to as Interface A - offers semiconductor manufacturers the ability to collect a significant amount of data that is crucial to the manufacturing process. This data is represented on the equipment as a model, which is communicated to EDA clients as metadata sets. The metadata, based upon the SEMI E125 Specification for Equipment Self-Description, includes the equipment components, events, and exceptions, along with all the available data parameters.

Since the advent of the SEMI EDA standards, developers and fabs have recognized that equipment models, and the resulting metadata sets, can vary greatly. It is possible to create vastly different models for similar pieces of equipment and have both models be compliant with the EDA standards. This makes it difficult for the factories to know where to find the data they are interested in from one type of equipment to another.

Recognizing this issue, the early adopters of the EDA standards launched an initiative in to make the transition to EDA easier and ensure consistency of equipment models and metadata from equipment to equipment. This effort resulted in the E164 EDA Common Metadata standard, approved in July 2012. Another part of this initiative was the development of the Metadata Conformance Analyzer (MCA), which is a utility that tests conformance to this standard. With this specification, equipment modeling is more clearly defined and provides more consistent models between equipment suppliers. This makes it easier for EDA/Interface A users to navigate models and find the data they need.

Power of E164

The E164 standard requires strict name enforcement for events called out in the GEM300 SEMI standards. It also requires that all state machines contain all of the transitions and in the right order as those called out in the GEM300 standards. This includes state machines in E90 for substrate locations and in E157 for process management. The states and transition names in these state machines must match the names specified in the GEM300 standards.

These requirements may seem unnecessarily strict, but implementing the common metadata standard results in:

• Consistent implementations of GEM300
• Commonality across equipment types
• Automation of many data collection processes
• Less work to interpret collected data
• Ability for true “plug and play” applications
• Major increases in application software engineering efficiency

Knowing that a model is E164 compliant allows EDA client applications to easily and programmatically define data collection plans knowing that the compliant models must provide all of the specified data with the specified names. For example, the following application is able to track carrier arrival and slotmap information as well as movement of material through a piece of equipment and process data for that equipment.

This application will work for any GEM300 equipment that is E164 compliant. The client application developer can confidently create data collection plans for these state machines, knowing that an E164-compliant model must provide the needed state machines and data with the proscribed names.

Decide to be E164 compliant

A number of leading semiconductor manufacturers around the globe have seen the power of requiring their equipment suppliers to provide EDA/E164 on their equipment, and now require it in their purchase specifications.

If you are a semiconductor manufacturer, you should seriously consider doing the same because it will greatly simplify data collection from the equipment (and most of your candidate suppliers probably have an implementation available or underway.

If you are an equipment supplier and your factory customers have not required that your EDA models be E164 compliant, you should still seriously consider providing this capability anyway as a way to differentiate your equipment. Moveover, E164-compliant models are fully compliant with all other EDA standards. Finally, it is much easier and more cost effective to create E164-compliant models from the outset than it is to create non-compliant models and then convert to E164 when the factory requires it.

Conclusion

The purpose of the E164 specification is to encourage companies developing EDA/Interface A connections to implement a more common representation of equipment metadata. By following the E164 standard, equipment suppliers and factories can establish greater consistency from equipment to equipment and from factory to factory. That consistency will make it easier and faster for equipment suppliers to provide a consistent EDA interface, and for factories to develop EDA client applications.

There are some of us in the software development community who recall when cloud computing was not much more than a marketing buzzword, mocked by many developers with first-hand experience at the pace of change in the internet age, but maybe not quite enough experience to know better. Today, cloud-enabled architectures are so commonplace that it’s the alternatives that must be defended in most quarters. Although not necessarily in manufacturing.

In parallel to cloud computing, Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing are happening, and the effects are becoming more apparent and impossible to ignore. Fewer people are mocking I4.0 and Smart Manufacturing as buzzwords. More often, they are being better defined as a set of useful principles and applied to real-world problems with exciting results.The confluence of I4.0 and cloud computing is a rather rare intersecting set. For many manufacturers, it’s a bit much. Those of us working in this area understand the famous quote (mis)attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win.” The fight is underway; the confluence of cloud computing and Smart Manufacturing are the focus of this writing.

During the Industry 3.0 changes, when computers were introduced in a significant wayts themselves all changed. Now that Industry 4.0 is upon us, it is the networking of these machines that is driving the change. The network effect is easy enough to understand, but the resulting change is bound to have ripple effects across the industry that will be hard to predict.

Something similar happened a decade ago with cloud computing. At first, the strategy and benefits were understood as simply renting compute power from a third party. “Cloud is just someone else’s computers” was a common refrain among IT professionals. This was true enough at first, when moving to the cloud was done as a “lift-and-shift” strategy. This meant you should take one app, run it on similar platforms in the cloud, save a few bucks, repeat. However, very quickly some very innovative companies realized that the flexibility, scalability and number of new services provided by public cloud vendors meant that applications would have to be re-architected to exploit these possibilities. The software industry is still discovering all the possibilities of the resulting SaaS models. Salesforce, Netflix, Amazon and a few others saw the possibilities, built their apps and services, and the rest of us are still learning.

At Cimetrix we have some experience working with manufacturers who are stepping into this area of I4.0 / cloud confluence. Our sense is that the conversations occur along the similar lines of pursuit. The first topics of conversation revolve around fear – security being the chief concern. How can a factory allow its data to leave the four walls? Two recent events have made this argument easier to overcome: TSMC had to shut down a major part of its operations in the summer of 2018 when a computer virus, installed on a new tool, spread to many other hosts. Hundreds of millions of dollars in shipment delays and other costs resulted from a breach of what had previously been thought to be a secure factory environment. On the cloud side: The Capital One breach, where one million social security numbers were stolen, had initial headlines that related it to the Amazon cloud. Since then, the bank has admitted fault and it has become clear that AWS services are secure.

Two critical elements important to the security argument are 1) employing talented security professionals and 2) deploying critical security patches as soon as vulnerabilities are discovered. The public cloud vendors recognized this long ago and hence their data centers employ security measures beyond the affordability of most business. Factories that continue to host their applications on premises, as opposed to the cloud, are increasingly competing with cloud vendors for security talent. These cloud vendors have massive scale and are still growing at ~40% per year. The result of this is that your apps and data are increasingly safer in the cloud than on an “on-prem” server.

Once these fears are assuaged the next line of reasoning tends towards identifying opportunities. This is where Cimetrix is uniquely positioned. We have the expertise to connect factory equipment, get the data into the cloud, and show our customers how to begin exploiting these technologies. Very often the first step is simply to connect as much factory equipment as possible, get a few simple messages, and expand later. This option has proven very fruitful for distributed supply chains that utilize contract manufacturing and outsourcing. Knowing the rate at which equipment is being utilized, which can be done with as few as two simple messages, can be extremely useful. Negotiating capital budgets for new products tends to improve when utilization rates for existing equipment are well known to all parties. The ROI for projects like this tends to be of the scale of months or weeks, not years.

After proving the ROI this way, with only a few simple messages, the next steps typically involve gathering more data. This is where the real power of cloud computing can be brought to bear. Smart factory computing implies the application of intelligence at the factory level to create a dynamic production environment where reducing costs and improving quality happens extremely quickly. Machine learning and very good AI tools are being developed now by the public cloud companies and to this author seem to be perfectly suited to factory data. “Big data” doesn’t get much bigger than the myriad of sensors already at work in a typical factory, pumping out immense amounts of data. Getting this data into the cloud and closing the loop back to factory equipment will benefit the first adopters in ways similar to the early cloud computing innovators.

Ten years ago innovative companies made a kind of leap, and re-architecting applications for the cloud brought large benefits. We see a similar leap coming for manufacturers who are willing to innovate with the help of these new cloud services. It’s not difficult to imagine how Amazon’s ecommerce engine has benefited from customer data to recommend just the right brand of beer to an on-line buyer of a Manchester United t-shirt. A data scientist I knew once said, “the algorithm says that when it’s raining in England we should recommend this beer. I don’t care why as long as it sells.” This same algorithm is on its way to a factory near you. Although instead of online conversions of browsers into buyers, these algorithms will be tweaked to focus on yields, cycle times, and utilization rates.

There are many other arguments for cloud computing which we ignore here. Arguments in favor of availability, scalability, compliance, ease of deployment, etc. These are all true but better addressed in many other venues. This is likewise the case for Industry 4.0; it is a younger sibling topic as compared to cloud computing, but still better fleshed out in other writings. We at Cimetrix are confident that when we look back 10 years from now, the companies that innovate best at this confluence of technologies will realize an immense potential. 

To learn more, or to schedule a consultation, please click below.

The Cimetrix Resource Center is a great way to familiarize yourself with standards within the industry as well as find out about new and exciting technologies.

Our resource center features information about equipment connectivity and control, data gathering, GEM (SECS/GEM), EDA/Interface A, and more. These standards are among the key enabling technologies for the Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 global initiatives that are having a major impact on the electronics assembly, semiconductor, SMT and other industries. Manufacturers and their equipment suppliers must be able to connect equipment and other data sources, gather and analyze data in real time, and optimize production through a wide variety of applications. The videos and video series featured in our resource center provide in-depth coverage of some of these concepts.  Some of our featured videos are below.

• Smart Manufacturing Series by Ranjan Chatterjee
• What Happens in a Gigafactory Minute
• Cimetrix at IPC Apex 2019
• The Big Picture: EDA Overview and Mechanics

Be sure to stop by our Resource Center any time or watch the videos directly from the links in this posting.