KIC and Mentor Partner on Integrated Thermal Process Technology for Industry 4.0

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KIC is collaborating with Mentor, a Siemens Business, leveraging KIC's professional knowledge on thermal processes and Mentor's comprehensive expertise on surface mount technology (SMT) manufacturing towards Industry 4.0. This cooperation utilizes KIC’s smart oven technology to provide process transparency, traceability, consistent quality and reduced costs through a new level of automation for their mutual customers.

KIC and Mentor will collaborate on extending the Open Manufacturing Language (OML) to include thermal processes. OML, the leading real-time event-driven communication protocol for PCB assembly, currently supports printer, inspection, test and SMT operations, offering a comprehensive connectivity solution for any manufacturing execution system (MES). This collaboration will improve the thermal process avoiding unnecessary downtime, reducing labor, and improving overall quality.

Monitoring the reflow, wave solder, or cure process in high resolution requires thousands of readings from embedded sensors, generating significant amounts of data. KIC continues to be the technology and market leader in leveraging this data, through real-time analytics, providing automation and actionable solutions. Smart software is used to manage the sensors’ output as real-time events extended to OML and will allow users to track trends and errors when they occur – improving product quality, equipment utilization and profitability.

"The cooperation between Siemens and KIC creates a unique comprehensive offering for electronics manufacturing data acquisition," stated Dan Hoz, general manager of the Valor Division of Mentor, a Siemens business. "It brings together two domain leaders to provide our joint customers with a complete, easy-to-implement connectivity solution covering SMT assembly and inspection, as well as thermal processes, taking us one step further towards a fully digitalized factory and implementation of the Industry 4.0 vision."

KIC President Bjorn Dahle said, "As the industry evolves beyond simple machine focus towards using machine and process data to achieve a new level of factory effectiveness, KIC is proud to work with Mentor to help its customers move towards this goal."

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