Suite provides smart manufacturing capabilities for electronics

Expanding on Siemens’ digital innovation platform, Camstar Electronics Suite creates a digital thread to empower electronics companies to further their digitalisation strategy in line with Industry 4.0. By closing the loop between engineering and the shop floor, and enabling quick reactions to design modifications, manufacturers can shorten product lifecycles, increase production complexities and improve quality across the entire manufacturing lifecycle.

Greg Gorbach, Vice President, Digitisation and IoT, ARC Advisory Group, stated: “Siemens made an important step towards helping electronics manufacturers improve operations performance when they acquired Camstar, but by adding capabilities from Mentor’s Valor Electronics Manufacturing Solutions software they can now drive a new level of productivity, throughput, and quality for both PCB, mechanical and box-build manufacturing.

“With Mentor’s Valor edge data acquisition technology and tight integration with Teamcenter to support a robust digital twin and digital thread, the Camstar Electronics Suite now enables customers in the electronics industry to rapidly adapt to design changes and to speed production by directly connecting with specialised machines and production lines.”

Siemens PLM Software reportedly continues to grow its digital innovation platform and look for new ways to expand on the most robust digital twin. This recent collaboration between Siemens’ manufacturing operations management (MOM) software and Mentor technology has created a unique solution, which covers the complete end-to-end mechatronics manufacturing process.

Camstar Electronics Suite activates the flow of product and business data between product lifecycle management (PLM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and shop floor execution through an integrated digital thread, enabling faster and streamlined change cycles. Using this single data source, closed-loop feedbacks from production to design and engineering departments can result in improved quality levels and shorter new product introduction (NPI) processes and go-to-market times.

Siemens’ technology development benefits from the fact that the company also has advanced operational factories which can be early adopters of Siemens innovations. 

Hermann Kraus, MES Project Lead at Siemens Fürth, stated: “The Camstar Electronics Suite introduces a layer of value that we could never reach with our existing set of disconnected tools, even with custom integration. Furthermore, the inclusion of Valor IoT data acquisition in the suite has drastically simplified the deployment across our assembly lines.

“We have already taken the first step of implementation, optimising material flow with Valor Material Management. We are currently introducing the second step that will deliver a true one-stop-shop solution for Electronics Manufacturing management, covering all process areas and integrated with PLM and ERP.”

René Wolf, Senior Vice President of Manufacturing Operations Management for Siemens PLM Software, concluded: “This collaboration with Mentor’s Valor technology along with the introduction of Camstar Electronics Suite further expands our positioning in the electronics market and fortifies our leadership as industry trendsetters.

“In an era where mass customisation and rapid time-to-market determine the ability of electronics companies to succeed, manufacturing processes must be flexible and smart enough to accommodate rapid change in product requirements, while optimising production efficiency and improving the overall product quality. This is exactly the kind of innovation that the new Camstar Electronics Suite delivers to the market.”