Griffin, GA - The new CAMX standards for factory-level data exchange were the focus of a two-day workshop sponsored by IPC (ipc.org), the trade group that helped author the specs. While several leading firms are touting the promise of CAMX, the jury remains out on whether the drivers are in place for widespread adoption.

The seminar took place Oct. 20-21 at NACOM, a tier-one automotive supplier. Most attendees were already involved in the CAMX (Computer Aided Manufacturing using XML) API project headed by Georgia Tech's Manufacturing Research Center. These participants - Agilent, Asymtek, BTU, DEK, Orbotech, Panasonic, Pillarhouse and Universal - shared specific experiences with CAMX implementation. NACOM also detailed its switch to CAMX-compliant manufacturing during a facility tour.

Lacking, however, was the type of attendees the seminar was developed for - that is, OEMs and other companies that have yet to jump on the CAMX bandwagon. The open-architecture standards have been slow to catch fire, possibly due to integration costs, security fears, the general market dive that shrunk IT budgets, the lack of hard numbers on ROI and the availability of competitors that provide proprietary software.

According to Thomas Baggio, an engineering manager at Panasonic, and David Hicks, CEO of Nematron Corp., a high-end control systems provider, the real drive is lacking because an end-user push has yet to materialize. This group of early adopters is betting that the market and demand will tick up. At worst, the adopters already have platform-independent process control machinery in place to offer the kinds of integration, flexibility, traceability and data control advantages that manufacturers need more than ever.