There's a new messenger in town and it's called Hermes. Named after the Greek messenger of the gods, it brings good tidings to the SMT industry. The good news is that around 60 leading equipment suppliers have unified around a modern protocol to replace the dated SMEMA standard. And Mycronic will now chair this initiative. "I'm honored to be entrusted to continue the good efforts of this global initiative" says Hakan Sandell, Director of Industry 4.0 platform solutions at Mycronic, who was passed the baton of Chairman of Hermes by ASM's Thomas Bliem at last year's Productronica Show. "The new standard will provide a modern backbone for board-flow data management in tomorrow's smart factory." A grassroots initiative. Uniquely, the Hermes standard is an industry-driven initiative that grew out of a need for more affordable machine-to-machine (M2M) automation. Even more remarkably, it got started when two SMT vendors, ASM and ASYS, initiated a dialog on how to find a better digital standard for the various types of software being used on the SMT line. "From day one, there was industry-wide interest in finding a more affordable way to make SMT software more compatible," recalls Hakan. "Naturally every vendor could have developed their own future proprietary protocols, but the costs would be huge. Most importantly, it would not have been in the best interest of our customers. Now we have a vendor-independent standard that offers a win-win solution for all."
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