Clemens Jargon and Olivier Pirou from Mycronic and Vi TECHNOLOGY attended the award ceremony.

Two of Mycronic’s solutions received a GLOBAL Technology Award 2019

 
Last night Global SMT & Packaging held their annual Global Technology Award at Productronica, and recognized Mycronic with two awards for being one of the industry’s leading innovators. One for our Jet Printer and SPI inspection machine’s add-on and repair solution and one for Vi TECHNOLOGY’s process control software SIGMA Link.

Award in the category “Printing equipment”

Mycronic’s solder paste add-on and repair solution closes the loop in solder joint quality, achieving zero stencil defects. By combining two innovative products, MY700 Jet Printer and PI 3D SPI, Mycronic has created a breakthrough offering to the SMT industry. It opens new perspectives in terms of quality control of the paste deposition process in a SMT assembly line with high product mix at any production volume.

The jury motivation: “Mycronic’s add-on and repair solution addresses a major need in the industry. It is well documented that up to 70% of defects originate from the stencil printer. Of these defects, the majority are missing solder paste. By automatically verifying the paste deposits and replenishing the missing paste with this verification system, the overall reliability and yield of the line will improve.”

“I am very glad that our innovations are getting attention in the industry. The add-on and repair solution with the jet printer and SPI machine is a unique solution, solving a major issue for our customers,” explains Clemens, VP Global SMT at Mycronic.

Award in the category “Process control system”

The SIGMA Link process control software suite helps to achieve new levels of product quality and SMT process reliability, by leveraging Vi TECHNOLOGY’s SPI and AOI inspection machines. Its real-time data correlation and analysis deliver a unique and powerful tool to take a close control over the manufacturing process, and to visibly increasing First Pass Yield.

The jury motivation: The SIGMA Link software suite takes a holistic approach to monitoring the entire shop floor and monitors any deviations in the process, not only the AOI or SPI data. This, in combination with the ease of programming and easy to follow GUI, were two winning factors.

Solder paste add-on and repair Eliminate stencil printing compromises at any volume with the MY700 3D SPI Add-on and Repair module. Discover how our fully integrated 3D SPI and jet printing solution automatically identifies and fills in missing or damaged solder paste print to help you maintain the highest throughput speeds with simpler stencil designs and zero defects.

How data-driven production is redefining tomorrow’s workflows

 
New product mixes. New innovations. New perspectives. As electronics assembly grows more complex, Mycronic and its customers are expanding their visions for the future. It’s all about leveraging bigger data and actionable insights to take broader control of fast-changing industry demands.

SMARTER WORKFLOWS ARE JUST AROUND THE CORNER. Imagine sitting down at your desk in the morning and opening a new ECAD file. It’s intriguing. The substrate is stretchable. A few of the components you’ve never seen before. And the customer wants a prototype tomorrow. She also wants the first 10,000 board batch optimized, manufactured and shipped for assembly in Hanoi at the end of the month. It’s all attached under the subject line: “Can you handle this one?”

Anticipating change through deeper insights

In the near future, this simple question will reveal powerful new business insights. Your software might predict the new job’s effects on ongoing production and purchasing, simulate the first run and adjust key parameters to the board design. It might tell you if you can meet the deadline, your overall equipment effectiveness throughout the job, and signal key staff to tell them where and when they’re needed most. Before you even start, you’ve simulated the product’s DPMO based on millions of points of past production data, and you know your line utilization will be 85%.

“These are some of the things we think about when we think about putting our customers in control,” says Thomas Stetter, Mycronic, “and this scenario isn’t as far off as you might think. In fact, we’re investing heavily in making all of these capabilities possible.”

Preparing for tomorrow’s opportunities

Ask industry experts what challenges tomorrow’s electronics manufacturers will face and the list is bound to be wideranging. On the technology side, the trends continue toward miniaturization and higher material variability. On the business side, average PCB sales prices are on the decline, and customer expectations for faster time-to-market are on the rise. Simply put, the pressure is on to unleash bigger gains in quality and efficiency throughout the assembly process.

Taking performance to the next level

Together with customers, Mycronic is leveraging its end-to-end expertise, software and solutions to unleash new levels in quality, flexibility and productivity throughout the factory. This means delivering not just higher-performance machines, but more actionable data flows, more compatible interfaces and more adaptive, predictive information loops. All of these are part of the company’s vision to enable the zero defect assembly line with the highest possible utilization for any product mix.

A new mindset for a new era

To achieve this ambition, a new mindset is needed. A perspective that looks beyond individual process steps and ideal machine speeds to proactively identify and address actual efficiency leakages – wherever they might occur. This involves better measurement, control and anticipation of process variations to reach new levels in product quality and process automation. It requires smarter data flows to minimize working capital and boost delivery output. And above all, it demands a clear vision for tomorrow’s agile manufacturing – a vision that is quickly becoming reality.

Charting the course ahead

Guiding the course for this development are six key process pillars that Mycronic believes will unlock significant new gains in quality, productivity and flexibility in the years ahead. Although individual machine capabilities remain important, advances in these six key areas will redefine the industry’s previous conceptions of production performance.

Quality, productivity and flexibility redefined

Where quality was once considered a final verification step, in the smart factory it is about producing fewer defects in the first place with the help of powerful in-line inspection systems, factory-wide sensors and advances in deep learning algorithms. Productivity, once viewed as machines and people performing at full capacity, is now seeing significant gains thanks to enhanced machine-to-machine, machine-to-human and collaborative robotics interfaces. And flexibility, previously defined in terms of machine capabilities, is now being expanded to include adaptive factory-wide systems with unprecedented levels of visibility.

All of this is becoming possible thanks to intensive collaborative innovation between Mycronic and its customers. “With multiple global R&D and application centers, together with process and integration engineers near our customers worldwide,” says Thomas Stetter, Mycronic, “we’re now able to bring our process expertise closer to the rapid new application developments in a number of key industries. Whether it’s automotive, medical or consumer electronics, we’re constantly learning and adapting to their needs.”

Where can we give you better control?

This brings us back to our original scenario and the question faced by every electronics manufacturer today: Can your factory handle the challenges that the future might bring? A future that demands zero defects and higher line utilization, even in the face of fast-changing product mixes, complex design for manufacturing collaborations and constantly smarter data management?

“At Mycronic, we believe the answer is ‘of course you can,’” continues Thomas. “According to our product roadmap, at least, we’re moving quickly to a production that’s more predictive, more adaptive to dynamic changes and far more data-driven. Because our customers work with innovative products, it’s our responsibility to give them innovative production solutions, together with deeper, more useful insights into their processes.”

“What this looks like on the factory floor will vary enormously depending on the customer’s business strategy, supply chain, cost structure, and so on,” he concludes. “What we aim to do is bring the system-wide perspective, the process expertise and the right technologies. Then it’s just a question of looking together at potential performance gaps to ask: Where can we give you better control?”
 

Six key process pillars for the future factory

Data-driven manufacturing is redefining tomorrow’s workflows and unlocking new opportunities in quality, flexibility and productivity. Mycronic has defined six key process pillars that will be vital to capturing more value in tomorrow’s most demanding production environments. 

1. Process control

The foundation for process control is a series of sensors that measure the process parameters and perform accurate data collection. This data needs to be refined into actionable information through software analytics and correlation, which increasingly requires AI to interpret the “soft” data. Extensive open APIs will also be required, since process data must be made available to all potential consumers in the factory, not only the machine or process point that collected the data.

2. Production scheduling and line performance optimization

The key challenge will be to reach high levels of performance and utilization while still allowing for a high degree of fl exibility when it comes to ever-changing build schedules and urgent orders. Scheduling and optimization tools must take into account both historical data and a “best guess” future projection. Full visibility of materials, machines and staffing levels is key to creating an optimized, yet robust, build schedule. This will require integration with other key systems in the factory.

3. Quality management

Quality management systems will evolve from the traditional approach of capturing, classifying and recording defects, to the more value-adding approach of predicting and preventing defects. This will require self-learning systems with the ability to anticipate drift, correlate data to create actionable information, and close the loop to prevent defects before they occur. The goal should be to also make the quality system an integrated part of the design process, so that product developers can predict the quality outcome of their design choices.

4. Equipment automation

Automation is not only about reducing manual labor. It is also about improving quality by avoiding human mistakes. However, 100% automation in complex production environments is neither possible nor economically viable, today. A more collaborative approach to automation will be required in the future, where machines, robots and humans work better together to perform assembly tasks, and to verify the result of these tasks.

5. Material handling

Stock accuracy, traceability, and delivery performance are the key aspects of a material handling system. Today, most factories rely on manual handling, often with the support of barcode or RFID systems. But increased automation is required, and in many cases is already ongoing. Many Mycronic customers have already started to invest in robots and AGVs, and Mycronic is actively supporting them by adapting products for robot interaction. We have also invested in an in-house robotics lab in order to be prepared and to better support our customers in this area. We will also see more augmented reality solutions to better guide humans to carry out those tasks that cannot be fully automated.

6. Communication & Connectivity

The future smart factory will require integration on all levels, and in many cases this will require customization. Whether it’s product-to-machine, machine-to-machine and human-tomachine feedback loops or vertical integration to ERP and MES systems, Mycronic has the ability to off er custom-made software integrations in all areas where our solutions play a role. The need for customized horizontal and vertical integration is certain to grow in the future, as manufacturers experience everincreasing demands for transparency. Industry communication standards such as Hermes, CFX and IPC-2581 (Digital Product Model Exchange) will play an important role in this development. Mycronic is supporting and actively participating in the development of these standards.
 

Interested to learn how bigger challenges is requiring bigger perspectives? Read how data-driven production is redefining tomorrow’s workflows.