New Software Toolkit, CFX Messaging Library Expedites Connected Factory Exchange Implementation

IPC – Association Connecting Electronics Industries®, is proud to announce that through today’s donation and legal transfer of a technology from Aegis Software, the industry will have an open-source engineering toolkit that simplifies and expedites both CFX (connected factory exchange) data message creation, and message communication from machine-to-machine and/or machine-to-broker in a CFX network.

The software toolkit, called the CFX Messaging Library, will post to a public open-source website where software developers at machine vendors, software vendors, and manufacturers are free to contribute, evolve, and expand its functionality to make it an even more useful tool for the only standards-based factory data communication solution for the industry.

David Bergman, IPC vice president of standards and training said, “IPC appreciates the contributions of Aegis Software to the IPC CFX standard effort. The donation of this toolkit will pave the way for quicker adoption of the IPC CFX standard in support of Industry 4.0.” The Connected Factory Initiative is growing rapidly with committee members representing software vendors, tier one EMS and OEM manufacturers, and machine and device vendors.

The committee’s work is leading to the creation of a modern, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) method for creating factory data exchange in an elegant, cost effective, open, and free manner. The Initiative has already established the encoding format to be used, the data communication technology, and the content structure for the messages. Leading up to productronica, vendors from across the spectrum have been contributing their expertise on the data content specific to their equipment. Productronica 2017 will see the merging of many of these data sets and further agreement toward final adoption of the IPC CFX standard.

The CFX Messaging Library is a Microsoft .Net based programming library which will ease the burden of development for companies wanting to connect their equipment and software systems to the IPC Connected Factory Exchange messaging network. The CFX Messaging Library consists of two parts: One, a collection of data objects representing the standardized CFX messages and Two, a collection of classes to facilitate the transmission and receipt of CFX messages using the committee-agreed OASIS AMQP1.0 message wire protocol.

Jason Spera, CEO of Aegis Software commented, “The keys to widespread adoption and speed of adoption of a messaging standard to support the creation of real Industry 4.0 factories is the ease with which machine vendors, software vendors, and manufacturers can actually implement connection to a CFX network. There can be no requirement for third-party tool investments or licensing costs, and engineering implementation of the communication itself must be simple and fast.

“Aegis is pleased to donate this technology and looks forward to it eliminating both the learning curve that would otherwise be involved in implementing a messaging technology and the creation of properly formed messages themselves,” Spera added.

For more information on the 2-17 Connected Factory Initiative Subcommittee and the evolving standard, visit www.ipc.org.