Taking Standards and Industry Into a Future Age

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

IPC APEX EXPO 2024 proved to be another busy week in the world of IPC Factory of the Future standards development. It would be near impossible to cover every last nook and cranny of important discussions, outcomes, and future-looking plans that occurred during our Factory of the Future standards committee meetings, but we will do our best to provide a textual highlight reel for the week.

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A Hermes Group is Born
APEX EXPO was host to the first-ever meeting of the IPC Hermes Standard Task Group. That’s right, we now have a task group for closer collaboration with The Hermes Standard Initiative members on the ongoing development of IPC-HERMES-9852, The Global Standard for Machine-to-Machine Communication in SMT Assembly.

The Hermes Standard Initiative and IPC formed this task group to give Hermes users on their shop floors a seat at the table and a voice in the ongoing development of the standard. This is an important step forward as Hermes utilization increases, especially in facilities that also utilize IPC-CFX.

During the meeting, attendees learned that IPC-HERMES-9852, Version 1.6 had recently cleared Final Draft for Industry Review (FDIR) and subsequent unanimous vote by the Hermes Standard Initiative members. The standard is now under vote by an IPC ballot group with publication planned for later this spring.

Even though Version 1.6 may be wrapping up, the Hermes Messengers A-Team is already getting to work on enhancements for Version 1.7.

To read the rest of this article, which appeared in Real Time with... IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Show & Tell Magazine, click here.