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24 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2018 further leveraging the Mentor suite of tools. In short, we help customers achieve value realiza- tion from either software or equipment they've purchased. On the PCB side, in addition to the full breadth of PCB design, component manage- ment, analysis and simulation tools, we also have a team focused on integration of PLM and integration with various other ecosystems to optimize that value chain. We've embarked on a mission of the digital enterprise. The digital enterprise as a concept means we're moving to help organizations vir- tually ideate, simulate, and emulate, as much as possible before product designs get into the real world of manufacturing where costs are applied for real materials, for real assets, for real production and production time con- sumed. Since being acquired by Siemens, we are core to the strategy for a digital twin, when it comes to the electronics flow, as a key part of the digital enterprise strategy. Shaughnessy: Tell me more about the "digital twin." Gorajia: A digital twin is literally a virtual version of a product and the physics-based models around it and everything one needs to do physically. A virtual product model, in which you would, in the design stages, per - form all the simulation, validation, and analy- sis whether it's thermal characteristics, signal integrity characteristics or design for manu- facturing analysis. Then, as we move into manufacturing, how can we simulate what the manufacturing environments would be? How do we design for manufacturing? How do we simulate the process engineering and manufacturing engineering for the product? What equipment is best to be run for this par - ticular product at what time and how? What are the parameters of those and what are the constraints (cost optimization, material avail- ability, asset availability)? Do as much of that product engineering offline as possible with- out tying up physical assets. When we move into manufacturing execu- tion we have all the tools for that as well. We have tools to virtually simulate before you commit resources, labor, and assets in terms of material. Strengthening the digital twin was a key piece in the Siemens strategy. Sie - mens has all those tools for the mechanical design through manufacturing and related tools to enable a digital thread through that flow. We now bring to the table the electrical and the electronics flow. We're filling in that gap, because almost everything today—cars included—have not only mechanical pieces and electromechanical pieces, but have elec - tronics, wires and in many cases wire har- nesses. All that needs to be designed, mod- eled and simulated and validated before it goes into manufacturing. From then manu- facturing needs to be optimized and managed as well. That's the direction we're headed, is to be able to take and optimize as much as possible, all the business processes, all the physical pro- cesses, manufacturing processes, for example, the design process to make sure that at the end of the day you're creating a product, first time, at quality, at margins, at cost, on time. That's the goal. As mentioned earlier, one part of my team focuses on manufacturing consulting. We'll go into factories and analyze how a company is operating today, what their inventory looks like, what's their material flow, and how well it all works. Based on the initial assessment, we put together a blueprint of recommendations to