Introducing The Hermes Standard Supervisory App

Our Request for Comment

We have announced today to a small group of existing customers and machine builders associated with those customers the release of our Hermes Standard Supervisory App MVP (Minimum Viable Product) for IPC-HERMES-9852. This follows the soft launch of the software development at Productronia 2025 where we gained strong interest from our booth at the show.

Users and interested parties are reminded that while this is a MVP it is also considered a software ALPHA meaning data may be lost and functionality may be reworked between versions. If this is known at the release of a software version a note will be recorded on the Release Page.

In the tradition to our business culture, being open from the start is a way for us to seek user feedback, domain knowledge and allow interested parties to 'play along' in the spirit of innovation.

We also hope this encourages other suppliers to create their own solutions for the Hermes Supervisory Channel.

The brief history of IPC-HERMES-9852

• The Hermes Standard Initiative was a closed group welcoming Machine Builders only.
• There have been discussions over the years of opening it up to everyone including software suppliers but this never materialised.
• The Global Electronics Association formed the 2-17B IPC-HERMES-9852 Standard Task Group open for everyone to join.
• The time elapsed has resulted in software suppliers not being engaged with IPC-HERMES-9852 and instead have focused on IPC-2591 CFX software development. The CFX (Connected Factory Exchange) however is not supported by some PLC users.
• The Hermes Standard has a optional feature of a Supervisory Channel i.e. a connection with a Server, using XML over TCP/IP Network Sockets compatible with PLCs.

Our Roadmap Features of the App

The main functionality of the App will mirror the messages available from the Hermes Standard (shown in the diagram above) and you can expect other suppliers of similar software will provide the same functionality. That is the genius of using a data standard - there is no vendor lock-in!

Work Order Creation and Assignment - Work Orders are collections of PCB Board records with an ID. Machines will be able to request these records at the start of a production line, or optionally request these records and compare it with the records it has received via the Horizontal Channel. This would be an Interlocking opportunity where a Machine could Stop, or not Start - depending on the Machine's line position, if the values don't match.

Work Orders would be created from Templates optionally containing variable data such as numbers, for IDs and Barcodes. To prevent duplication of data, connections to external sources that already contain this data will be possible and the data pulled in.

Board Movements - A record of when a Board Arrives to and Departs from a Machine will give us the opportunity to process some historical Analytics and create alerts when movements timing drift from the norm. Simply retaining these records will provide users with production traceability records.

With this data it will also be possible to create Live Visual Dashboards showing the current position of any Board.

Keeping Updated and Playing Along

• View the Brochure website
• Checkout the Support Page
• Sign up to the Newsletter
• Subscribe to the YouTube Channel
• Add a Feature Request or report a bug
• Give us an eMail: hermes.supervisory.app@4IR.UK
• When available, Purchase it from our Software Reseller

About 4IR.UK British Systems

We are a Smart Factory solutions provider for the SMT Electronics Assembly manufacturing industry. We were founded in 2016 after the support of a seed funded Business Accelerator. We create hardware Adaptors that operate in more than 20 countries that extend the life of SMEMA based manufacturing equipment by providing solutions for production monitoring and supporting data connections to the Hermes Standard and the Connected Factory Exchange CFX. We also develop Software Extensions for the Low-Code No-Code MultiPlug Edge Computing Platform. The flexibility of off-the-shelf software combined with inside industrial experience means that 4IR.UK is ideally placed to anticipate and respond to a factory's changing needs.