Newsroom
GenRad Product Commercializes Technologies
from NEMI’s Plug And Play Factory Project
Shop Floor Line Manager™ Monitors Factory
Floor Data for Improved Line Control
Press Contacts at bottom of page
APEX — LONG BEACH, Calif., March 13, 2000 — GenRad’s (NYSE: GEN) Shop Floor Line Manager™ (SFLM), introduced last November, incorporates many of the technologies developed by the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative’s (NEMI’s) Plug and Play Factory Project. This successful implementation of Plug and Play’s standards-based architectures and communication protocols demonstrates the commercial application of these standards and helps ensure interoperability of equipment on the factory floor.
"The Plug and Play Factory project brought together industry, academia and government to work on the critical problem of interoperability on the factory floor. Seeing solutions developed by our project implemented in a commercial product by one of our member companies is the very essence of NEMI value," said Jim McElroy, executive director and CEO of NEMI. "GenRad has successfully leveraged their involvement in the Plug and Play project not only to enhance their own product capability but also to benefit industry as a whole by embracing a standards-based solution."
Plug and Play, a project of NEMI’s Factory Information Systems (FIS) Technology Implementation Group (TIG), was lead by Allan Fraser, director of business development for GenRad’s GR Software business unit. The two-year project focused on development of standards necessary to achieve interoperability among hardware and software components used by electronics manufacturers and included establishment of a testbed at the Georgia Institute of Technology to test the concepts developed by the project. In addition to GenRad, several Fortune 500 OEMs and electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers participated in the Plug and Play Project, including Celestica, Inc., Compaq Computer Corporation, Delphi Delco Electronics, Intel Corporation, Lucent Technologies and Solectron Corporation.
The proposed NEMI Plug and Play standards have been transferred to IPC — Association Connecting Electronics Industries which is pursuing American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Electro-technical Commission (IEC) accreditation for these shop floor equipment standards.
"The adoption of NEMI’s FIS standards could greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to integrate new equipment and software systems into the manufacturing supply chain. This capability is critical for maintaining manufacturing agility as well as for increasing the efficiency of shop floor operations," stated John Cartwright, co-chair of the NEMI FIS TIG and manager of Factory Information Systems at Intel.
Shop Floor Line Manager (SFLM™ ) is a module of GenRad’s flagship manufacturing execution system (MES) Shop Floor Data Manager™ (SFDM™ ), and extends MES functionality to provide integrated machine and equipment process control for the electronics assembly industry.
Shop Floor Line Manager uses several web-based technologies developed by the Plug and Play Project. These include a distributed object-oriented publish and subscribe messaging architecture based on industry standard eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) messages; the development of virtual machine technology to monitor factory performance over the Internet; and web application services to make factory floor data available throughout the supply chain.
"Using Shop Floor Line Manager together with Shop Floor Data Manager gives our customers control over their entire manufacturing process. As a result, they can ramp new products faster, speeding time to market," said Steve Holford, president of GenRad’s GR Software business unit. "Our involvement with the Plug and Play Factory Project was important in the development of this product, both from the standpoint of the technologies it provided and the insight it gave us into the needs of the OEMs and EMS providers who will use this product. We have been very satisfied with the return on our investment in the NEMI consortium."
About NEMI
The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative was formed in November 1994 to facilitate long-term North American leadership in electronics. The industry-led consortium is made up of more than 50 electronics equipment manufacturers, suppliers, associations, government agencies and universities. NEMI’s members represent a combined total of more than $200 billion in 1998 revenues and employ more than 1.25 million people.
NEMI roadmaps the needs of the North American electronics industry, identifies gaps in the technology infrastructure, establishes implementation projects to eliminate these gaps, and stimulates standards activities to speed the introduction of new technologies. The consortium also works with government, universities, and other funding agencies to set priorities for future industry needs and R&D initiatives.
About GenRad
GenRad, Inc. (NYSE: GEN) provides electronics OEMs and their customers with the hardware, inspection systems, software and services to optimize manufacturing and after-market service productivity. GenRad, headquartered in Westford, MA, offers products and services through three business units: Advanced Diagnostic Solutions (ADS), Electronic Manufacturing Systems (EMS), and GR Software (GRS). GenRad employs approximately 1,400 people worldwide, of whom 35 percent are applications, software and hardware engineers. GenRad’s Internet address is www.genrad.com.
Shop Floor Data Manager, Shop Floor Line Manager, SFDM, and SFLM are trademarks of GenRad, Inc.
For further information, contact:
Cynthia Williams
207-871-1260
cwilliams@nemi.org
Allan Fraser
GenRad, Inc.
978-589-7239
frasera@genrad.com