Experiences of Standardisation in Electronics Manufacturing - Case: IPC/CAMX-Standard Section For Final Assembly and Packaging

摘要

Standardisation is a necessity for modular, re-configurable and re-usable production systems. This paper discusses standardisation issues around interfaces for shop floor control and communication in electronics manufacturing. The perspective is in the process of developing a standard and the steps needed to make one. A generic standard development procedure is reviewed and discussed and a closer look is taken at the standardisation process of IPC (Association Connecting Electronics Industries) and ANSI (American National Standards Institute). The generic steps are reflected with a real standardisation case; i.e. development of the IPC-2546 standard sectional for final assembly and packaging (IPC-2546 Amendment 2). This standard focuses on message exchange of the shop floor equipment in field of final assembly (back-end) in electronics manufacturing, and is part of the CAMX Shop Floor Equipment Communications standard series. The power of the CAMX standard family (Computer Aided Manufacturing using XML) comes from its modular structure. All equipment have some common base modules. On the top there are process specific modules, which lean on the lower ones. The modular structure of the standards results in modularity both at the machine and assembly system level. The different phases of the standard development process are presented and discussed bringing out advantages and disadvantages of the chosen processes. Some systematic methods and tools used for definitions are discussed, incl. Unified Modelling Language (UML), mind mapping and eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Use of these ensured more complete definitions and made it possible to achieve faster common understanding between the developers. Possible factors of success and failures in this kind of standard development are also shortly analysed in the paper based on experiences and learnings from the work presented.