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!

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!

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!

SEMICON West 2019 has come and gone! The annual trade show and technical conference was held this year at Moscone Center in San Francisco and turned out to be a very busy time for the Cimetrix team. The trade show lasted three days and filled two halls, including the newly renovated South Hall. We had many meetings with current clients, met with new potential clients and even made a few new friends along the way.

This year has been an interesting one, with the semiconductor capital equipment industry seeing a downturn. In January at ISS, the consensus was the trough for semiconductor capital equipment makers would be Q2 with growth returning in Q3 and Q4. Now, the consensus is the recovery in the chip memory market and manufacturing expansion may not happen until mid-2020. However, people also say the visibility is only for the next 3-6 months, so this could change. Many of our customers are affected by this downturn – the severity varying by their customer base and territory. Customers that are focused solely on semiconductor 300mm wafer fabs with a strong exposure to memory, have been hit the hardest with declines in revenue up to 50% from 2018 levels. Customers that have more diverse product lines and sell to semiconductor back-end or electronics markets are doing much better. While this downturn is affecting our customers to varying degrees, we had many executive meetings with virtually all of them expressing continued satisfaction and appreciation regarding the high quality of our products and technical support.

We also had two speakers at the Meet-the-Experts tech stage within the Smart Manufacturing Pavilion. Brian Rubow, Director of Solutions Engineering, spoke on how to get the most out of the GEM standard, including following what the standard says and fixing implementations using sound software practices. You can view his presentation here. Alan Weber, VP of New Product Innovations also spoke on Addressing Connectivity Challenges of Disparate Data Sources in Smart Manufacturing, addressing the road to the smart, digital and connected factory. You can view his presentation here.

Cimetrix continues to strengthen our relationship with SEMI by our global leadership and participation in SEMI standards meetings as well as our sponsorship of the Smart Manufacturing Pavilion. We sponsored a kiosk in the Pavilion where we connected our new Sapience platform for Smart Manufacturing to a BTU reflow oven, which generated quite a bit of excitement.

SEMI Standards meetings continue to be a priority for Cimetrix. We are well represented at the standards meetings by chairing/co-chairing various committees and attending/participating in others. The following are some of the areas of significance.

• The DDA task force continues to develop EDA Freeze 3 standards with adoption of cutting edge gRPC technology to improve performance.
• The Fab & Equipment Computer and Device Security (CDS) Task Force received approval for two SNARFs (Standards New Activity Report Form) - "SNARF: Specification for Application Whitelisting" and "SNARF: Malware Free Equipment Integration". The SNARFs were created by the CDS task force and approved by the Information and Controls global technical committee which Brian co-chairs.
• The North American Information & Control Committee at SEMI established a new task force Advanced Backend Factory Integration (ABFI) to define and update standards to meet the needs of the semiconductor backend industry. Brian Rubow from Cimetrix, Dave Huntley from PDF Solutions are two of the task force co-leaders.

During the SEMICON West show, an article was published, written by Cimetrix VP and GM, Smart Factory Solutions Ranjan Chatterjee and Dan Gamota, VP, Manufacturing technology and Innovation for Jabil. The article called “Smart Manufacturing Roadmap: Data Flow Considerations for the Electronics Manufacturing Industry” can be found here. This article identifies technology gaps and needs, and offers recommendations to guide the electronics manufacturing industry in realizing the benefits of smart manufacturing and is sponsored by iNEMI. Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Gamota are co-chairs of the new smart manufacturing chapter of iNEMI.

The Cimetrix team was excited to once again be an exhibitor and sponsor of the SEMICON West show. This is always a great show and we were very pleased to attend once again. We are already looking forward to SEMICON West 2020!

To view the presentations from SEMICON West, and many more, click on the button below.

SEMICON West is almost here and we’re excited to once again be participating this year as both an exhibitor and as a sponsor of the Smart Manufacturing Pavilion! Visit us any time at our booth 1644 in the South Hall, at our kiosk (#1364) in the Smart Manufacturing Pavilion, or at the Meet the Experts Theater which will feature Cimetrix speakers on Tuesday and Wednesday.

SEMICON West will once again be held in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA, USA from July 9-11. The theme this year is “Insight, Innovations & Intelligence: Our industry – and the world – is moving beyond smart.” We couldn’t be more excited about the momentum of the semiconductor industry. As Industry 4.0 and the demand for Smart Manufacturing solutions have become more prevalent, we’ve seen our market expand beyond the equipment manufacturers to encompass all phases of the electronics manufacturing process and corresponding elements of the supply chain. To achieve a smart, connected factory, you must first have equipment that can communicate effectively, which is where Cimetrix has always excelled. Our well-known and award-winning products enable every semiconductor manufacturer in the world to connect their equipment to the factory information and control systems. SEMICON West has always been an important event for meeting with current clients, making new contacts, collaborating in the SEMI Standards community, and developing relationships with thought leaders across the manufacturing spectrum.

The rapid and continuous growth of manufacturing data is now driving demand for new analysis technologies that can further leverage its value. The Smart Manufacturing Pavilion is a great place to see some of the breakthroughs that are creating smarter processes and spurring innovation across the industry.  The pavilion once again includes a Meet the Experts Theater, and Cimetrix has two opportunities to address the audience. Brian Rubow, Director of Solutions Engineering, will speak on “Getting the Most from the GEM Standard” on Tuesday July 9 from 1:30 – 2:00 pm. Alan Weber, VP of New Product Innovation, will talk about “Addressing the Connectivity Challenges of Disparate Data Sources in Smart Manufacturing” on Wednesday July 10 from 3-3:30 pm.  

The Smart Manufacturing Pavilion and its Meet the Experts Theater are in the South Hall and we hope to see you there! Or, as always, you can visit our booth 1644 any time during the show.

Cimetrix attended the recent JISSO PROTEC exhibition (June 5-7, 2019) at the Tokyo Big Sight International Exhibition Center to see the latest developments in SMT (Surface Mount Technology) manufacturing… and witnessed a truly compelling demonstration of the new SEMI Flow Manufacturing communications standards in action.

The new suite of standards is named SMT-ELS (Surface Mount Technology-Equipment Link Standards), and includes SEMI A1/1.1 as a lower-level messaging standard with SEMI A2 SMASH (Surface Mount Assembler Smart Hookup) defining the content of the messages required to configure an SMT manufacturing line and automate the material and information transfer among all equipment in that line. This is depicted in the figure below.

The demonstration itself included placement equipment from 4 large equipment suppliers—Fuji, JUKI, Panasonic, and Yamaha—as well as load/unload stations and a bar code reader at the beginning of the line (see picture below). Each of these companies had implemented the “horizontal” (machine-to-machine) communications according to the SMT-ELS standards. The demonstration consisted of an operator scanning one of the stack of input boards with the barcode reader, placing it on the loader conveyor, and then watching as each piece of equipment automatically adjusted its internal conveyor to accept the board, run through its part placement recipe, and pass the board to the next equipment in the line, finally arriving at the unload station conveyor after a minute or so.

Before a fully automated multi-vendor production SMT line can be implemented, more work on the standards is necessary, especially in the area of error handling and recovery. In addition, the suppliers of other (non-placement) equipment types must adopt this approach. However, given the factory benefit of mixing equipment from multiple suppliers to optimize line performance for a specific set of products, this is only a matter of time.

If you want to know more about the status and outlook of these standards, and how they can be implemented in your equipment or factory, please contact us.

Cimetrix just finished exhibiting at SEMICON Southeast Asia for the first time. And a grand entrance it was. Located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this is one of the regional SEMICON shows put on by SEMI, a global industry association serving the manufacturing supply chain for the electronics industry. Southeast Asia is a hotbed for semiconductor backend and PCBA (SMT) industries. With our new employee Raymund Yeoh located in Penang, Malaysia; combined with our distribution partner Electrotek based out of Singapore, Cimetrix now has a strong presence to support Industry 4.0 adoption in Southeast Asia. 

By working closely with SEMI, Cimetrix had a new booth in the SEMI Smart Manufacturing Pavilion and an impressive demonstration in the SEMI Smart Manufacturing Journey.

Our new booth emphasized (1) our global reach as the world’s largest supplier of equipment connectivity and control software, (2) our new Sapience^TM factory side platform which has beta installations at select major EMS and electronics manufacturing sites, and (3) our new EquipmentTest^TM connectivity tester designed to make equipment connectivity easier than ever before.

Our booth was extremely busy the whole time with demonstrations of Sapience and EquipmentTest. We gave out vouchers for free copies of EquipmentTest to booth visitors which generated excitement and will increase learning for GEM connectivity in Southeast Asia. It was interesting to see the number of factory engineers and managers who visited us seeking help with getting their equipment connected for traceability and OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness). And we had the answers. Right next door to our booth was the SEMI Smart Manufacturing Journey which had guided tours demonstrating the use of Industry 4.0 throughout the electronics manufacturing supply chain. Our job was to demonstrate data collection using standards from live equipment in real time displaying OEE charts and data for each tour to witness. Setting this up can take months in a factory. Our Smart Factory Business Team is out to turn this problem upside down. They connected to all 4 live equipment in one day and were ready to go at the start of the show. And we are ready to do that in factories too. 

Here is Mike and Jesse giving a demonstration to a tour group. The equipment is located right behind the crowd for all to see; with Sapience displaying data and the crowd taking pictures. SEMI did a great job organizing this. We had top government officials, factories, equipment manufacturers, electronics distributors and universities come through the tours. We also exceeded expectations by adding artificial intelligence to the demonstration. Amazon Alexa was integrated into Sapience which allowed us to ask Alexa which factory was most productive last week. Alexa and Sapience analyzed the data and gave the answer to the tour crowd.

We have many new opportunities to follow up; and we will be working with SEMI on how to help companies in Southeast Asia learn and adopt Industry 4.0.

Following the show, our team spread out to visit the rapidly growing Cimetrix customer base in Penang, Korea, India and China with support from our local teams. See you next year in SEMICON Southeast Asia!

Cimetrix team members from around the world gathered in Japan for our annual Global Sales Meeting. The entire Cimetrix sales team was in attendance, as well as all of our Asian based Solutions Engineering team members, representatives from product management and our Smart Factory Business unit. The meetings were held at our new Cimetrix Japan office located in Yokohama, outside of Tokyo. Our hosts from Cimetrix Japan made sure everyone’s time in Japan was very comfortable and the cherry blossoms were still in bloom. We also took advantage to visit key customers in Korea and Japan both before and after the sales meeting.

The sales meetings included updates on the Company’s long term strategy and product roadmaps. Team members reviewed local trends in their regions, which included North America, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China and Southeast Asia. In addition, team members reviewed the record number of new customers gained over the past several years, customer trends and plans to ensure customer satisfaction.

Everyone was in agreement the Cimetrix strategy to open local offices with sales and technical support has been working very well as customers greatly appreciate dealing with local people that share the same language and culture. As the leading provider of software solutions for equipment connectivity and control in the smart factory, this strategy allows Cimetrix to provide the highest levels of passionate customer support to ensure our customer’s success, as well as develop direct relationships with major customers to help drive product roadmaps.

In the past, many companies in Asia used competitive solutions from small regional suppliers. However, now that most companies do business worldwide, they prefer to deal with a larger company that is truly global and an expert not only in their native country, but everywhere their products are sold. Cimetrix is uniquely positioned to fill these needs.

It was very exciting to see the great team members that have joined Cimetrix and are working hard for our success around the world!

To contact us around the globe, visit our Contact page and select your local office.