MaterialPackageLeadingMaterialPackage Property

When the placement machine is using tape material the operator can splice a new tape onto the existing material. This will lead to a chain of material. Physically the existing reel with the barcode will be separated from the already mounted tape and a new tape with its reel will be appended to the material. This leads to the situation that the material chain can only be identified by the newest material added to the chain (known as the "trailing" material package) using the barcode on its reel. Typically the placement machine is consuming from the "leading" package of the chain. So the assumption is that we may build a chain B->A by splicing B to A, where A is the "leading" material package (consumed first), and B is the "trailing" material package (consumed last). In this situation, the chain will be identified only by the barcode of B, and the MaterialPackage structure of B will have its LeadingMaterialPackage property set to A. It should be noted that it is possible and permissible to form chains of more than 2 material packages. In this situation, each material package in the chain will have the LeadingMaterialPackage property set to the next package in the chain (with the exception of the material package that is currently being consumed (the "leading" material package).