Good things have to come in three

New levels of PCB assembly processing optimization promises Tecnomatix-Unicam with its eMPower Assembly Expert – to come in 3Q 2001. This expert software „will enable electronic manufacturing engineers to easily define factories and assembly lines and to choose the most appropriate processes to populate printed circuit boards,“ said the company at their Apex presentation. „It will make it as easy as point-and-click.“

With the product lines announced at Apex, the undisputed market leader in production planning solutions for con-tract electronics manufacturers hopes to further strengthen its position in the vividly growing CEM industry. It claims three quarters of the top twenty CEMs as its customers. Last year, the company grew from 132 employees to 220 today and has acquired its one-time competitor Fabmaster from France which is focused on shop-floor data automation. Tecnomatix-Unicam has now engineering and sales teams in eleven countries.

With the production output and market share of contract electronics manufacturers growing at a torrid pace, the company counts on a steep ascent as a provider of productivity software. According to U.S. market researcher Technology Forecasters, the CEM segment of the electronics industry could reach $1 trillion in 2004. By then, the share of CEMs of the overall market for electronic goods manufacturing will stand at 26% – an increase of 15% since 1999.

Tecnomatix-Unicam’s assembly process tool eMPower Assembly Expert provides process designers with an automated setup for importing, verifying and applying CAD and BOM (bill of material) data to generate machine programs for more than 150 different pieces of equipment from diferent vendors. This software is touted as the next-generation of the leading multi-vendor, offline programming method UniCam. It is a 32-bit Windows-NT application complete with C++ tools, and is as such easily integrated and utilized. On-line help is available. The software aims at further shortening time-to-market, increased throughput, manufacturing flexibility and accuracy, while reducing labor cost and downtime of assembly lines.

Also introduced at Apex: the eMPower Box Build Assembly. This is a collaborative software environment for both OEMs and CEMs to help them string together their planning departments, factory floors and outside contractors for establishing and operating at optimum workplace conditions. With this software, electronics manufacturers can design and schedule box-build operations by providing them a web-enabled data management infrastructure through capturing the actual shop-floor activities. It collects a comprehensive range of information on assembly sequencing, layout planning, line balancing, and cost optimization through 3D workplace design, work instructions and reporting capabilities. The system enables multi-site operation and review of manufacturing data and delivers status reports via the Internet.

This suite is structured as a client-server system, containing several component applications which can be implemented according to the users actual needs. For instance, manufacturing processes, if needed, can be easily transferred to different plants. The manufacturing processes can be accessed in real-time across LANs, WANs or the web. Relevant product life-cycle data is archived and continually updated for later analysis. This product can replace and unify several other traditionally not integrated tools from various vendors.

The third announcement in this series of web-based production optimization tools is the eMPower Production Advisor (available soon). It enables electronics manufacturers to graphically monitor operating SMT machines, delivers real-time manufacturing informaton from the shop floor and generates pertinent performance reports. These data are presented via a web-enabled, enduser-oriented application. According to Tecnomatix-Unicam, this Advisor supports SMT equipment from a wide variety of vendors, and it co-operates with other Unicam tools such as the Quality System and Assembly Expert. (Werner Schulz)

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