Comprehensive overview thanks to the Factory Equipment Center

In modern electronics manufacturing, the components must interact with each other as smoothly as the gears of a finely tuned engine. Even a single defective feeder can bring an entire SMT line to a standstill. Reconciling the continuous optimal availability of all moving assets with the day-to-day production requirements is no easy task. Where is which feeder located? Which nozzles are currently in use? Which placement head delivers a particular speed? Is an asset ready for use or does it require maintenance? Questions like these must be answered on a daily basis. But with the thousands of mobile assets, many of which frequently change their location on the shop floor, it was difficult if not impossible to keep track of everything – until now. 

Connectivity provides clarity

The Factory Equipment Center software redefines asset management. It focuses not just on asset tracking but on the integrative use of data and on ensuring maximum connectivity in line with ASMPT’s Intelligent Factory principle. Flexibly deployed assets can now be automatically detected and tracked throughout the factory. After its installation, the program takes a digital inventory of the SIPLACE placement machines from ASMPT. Only third-party systems must be added manually. This type of fully automatic detection is currently unrivaled on the market. And it saves a lot of time and money, considering that the average factory has between 10,000 and 15,000 feeders in use.

With numbers like these, feeder management is particularly critical for a smooth production process. Factory Equipment Center recognizes not only the numbers, types and locations of the feeders in use, it also keeps track of where they are currently operating or sitting idle. It registers how many cycles they have already performed and how many faults have occurred. Based on this information, the application can block feeders when they reach a defined threshold. When this happens, the machine will no longer accept them in a setup, and the system will automatically trigger a trip to the maintenance facility. 

Factory Equipment Center does not just track, it also learns. By permanently collecting usage-based information from the SIPLACE machines, placement heads, conveyors and SmartNozzles, Factory Equipment Center transforms data into actionable information that in turn serves as a catalyst for proactive decision-making. After all, only someone who knows their assets inside-out and monitors them automatically at all times can use them productively and utilize their capacities to the fullest so that they generate the best possible yields and thus maximize the user’s return on investment.