SMT007 Magazine

SMT-Apr2014

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April 2014 • SMT Magazine 83 EXpaNDiNG YOUr COMFOrT ZONE continues direct emails and phone calls get little response. Design is on another continent, speaking a dif- ferent language, in another time zone, and, by the way, the design team have long moved on to other projects. In an EMS scenario it is worse, because there is a commercial contract between the designer and manufacturer, with clear defi- nitions of responsibilities of costs should any- thing go wrong. The individual teams of people, who are supposedly working together in a flow, to intro- duce a new product into manufacturing, can- not actually spare the time to learn from each other. The PCB designer sometimes doesn't un- derstand the technologies and requirements around fabrication or assembly. After all, dif- ferent issues come from different engineering people, sites, and companies all the time, and there is no apparent consistency to someone who is not an expert in the field. It is not for the designer to be the mediator. The designer lives and works within his design tool, which justifiably governs his world view. The break- through here is to bring qualified information and know-how from the manufacturing process preparation teams directly into the designers' world, to expose opportunities for improve- ments in a way that the designer can understand The eSSenTiAl Pioneer'S SurViVAl guide figure 2: The lean nPI flow. and action. Concurrent design for manufactur- ing (DFM) tools that can model manufacturing requirements and present them natively within the design tool provide a way for the designer, with virtually no cost, to accommodate com- plex manufacturing requirements without hav- ing to understand the technology behind them. The value comes from the rule-set built into the DFM software, the process of extraction of the know-how from the engineering processes, and the fact that it is right inside the designer's na- tive environment. The PCB layout designer is happy, with a huge reduction of distractions from emails, phone calls, and demands for respins. Very little additional effort has resulted in a huge gain. The PCB layout is now qualified against manufacturing requirements. The fabrication and assembly people are also happy. The prod - uct model they now receive from design feeds straight into their process preparation tools, enabling them to simply get on and plan their processes and execution. There is, of course, a little piece of extra work for them to do, that is, to contribute information for the setting of the DFM rules, which is the feedback to design with the model of their requirements. These configurations should evolve continuously,

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