As manufacturing processes become increasingly complex, the programs that run on the controllers embedded in electronic component/equipment assembly systems and semiconductor manufacturing equipment are becoming more advanced. At the same time, equipment manufacturers must deal with greater complexity in their processes ranging from design and development to maintenance.

To help its customers develop these programs more efficiently, Yokogawa has developed the WideField3 programming tool for the FA-M3V and Tool Box programming tools for the controller's temperature control/monitoring and positioning modules. The sampling trace function for the FA-M3V's two CPU modules has also been enhanced to allow the long-term logging of field data. With this logging function, any time interval can be specified and many different types of triggers can be set. This greatly facilitates the analysis of problems that can occur at start-up or during normal operation. These new features allow quick system start-up and reduce the workload associated with processes such as design, development, and maintenance.