Octane Open Concept Solution: Innovative Analytics and Floor-control Software

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

I met Craig Reiselt, CEO of Octane Open Concept, on the show floor at IPC APEX EXPO 2019. Octane Open Concept targets the contract manufacturer and is well along in the development process for a pair of software tools designed to optimize assembly and testing results tracking on the manufacturing floor. These tools use real-time data collection from an MES or local testers and displays pictorial representations of failures, interestingly enough. While not necessarily taking advantage of all that Industry 4.0 has to offer yet, Octane’s products illustrate the type of innovative solutions that are possible when merging enterprise-wide data, machine-to-machine communications, and artificial intelligence.

In this conversation captured after the show, Craig and I discuss the company and the products and opportunities in front of Octane.

Nolan Johnson: Can you tell us about your company Octane Open Concept?

Craig Reiselt: I am the CEO and founder, and I also have a small part in sales; the rest of the team takes care of all of the technical aspects of the company. Octane Open Concept was an idea that started from a personal need for my other job as a director at a contract manufacturer. We needed some tools to enhance our productivity, and that’s how this came about—strictly to enhance what I was doing at Dynalab.

Johnson: Are there a lot of on-the-job challenges?

Reiselt: Yes. And as this started to evolve and other people and peers from other companies saw it, they were quickly interested in wanting to have it for themselves, so I thought, “Why not make retirement come a little closer if that’s possible, or a lot further away if we don’t succeed—whichever the case may be?”

Johnson: You had to take the risk.

Reiselt: Absolutely.

Johnson: Octane Open Concept delivers on what sort of vision and mission for the industry?

Reiselt: We’re bridging the gap for the MES segment of the industry. So, the original concept behind Octane was a product called Heatwave. What we did was simplify the process of fighting through hours and hours of data that is typically end-of-shift or next-day reporting and display it real time on the production floor. All the MES companies have phenomenal tools to dig deep into this data, but none of them can tell you what’s happening right now on your production floor. And if you can’t solve what’s happening at a given second on your production floor, you can’t stop things from going to repair.

Heatwave was designed to take all of that data and make it real time instead of putting it in pie charts, graphs, spreadsheets, etc. It’s a pictorial image of your circuit board as it goes down the line. So, if you have a defect on U1 at the screen printer, SPI, AOI, ICT, functional test, or where ever it may be in your process, as soon as it’s recorded to the MES, it’s populated and colorized on the monitors out on the floor.

Johnson: Did you demonstrate this software at IPC APEX EXPO 2019?

Reiselt: Yes. We were with CTI in their booth, and they had an integrated line with Omron, so we piggy-backed up on top of the AOI system, and as defects were reported by the AOI, we displayed them for everyone to see.

Johnson: Is your software limited to just those suppliers, or are you more open than that?

Reiselt: We’re completely open, as our name suggests. If you’re reporting a failure, it doesn’t matter how you’re reporting it; we will get it into a format that will allow it to be shown in a pictorial format. We can integrate with any of the AOIs, MESs, etc.; it doesn’t matter.

To read the full article, which appeared in the April 2019 issue of SMT007 Magazine, click here.