Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1267313
32 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2020 Chavez: Exactly. I live about maybe 27 miles from the office, but it just depends on the time of the day like when I used to live and work in Orange County, California. Feinberg: But there is a different side of it, too, and that's when you do have that coffee with a fellow member of your team and talk for 15–20 minutes, ideas come up. Two and two equals five. There is that factor that you don't have working remotely. There are a lot of pluses to working at home, but there are some negatives as well. Chavez: You lose that "Aha!" moment when you're talking to a colleague at work. When you hear two people talking about a problem, walk by, and stand there while you're waiting for your coffee, you may chime in your two cents, and now they have a solution. The neg- ative side of working remotely is losing those old-fashioned, face-to-face co-worker interac- tions. Matties: Good point. When you start talking about young engineers, now they're sitting in their homes doing this. How do you go about mentoring while working remotely? Chavez: The only way to do it is how we're doing it now. You must have teleconferences to go over designs and check things. You just have to go the extra mile, but if a young en- gineer is hungry and has a good mentor, they will feed off each other's energy, and it can still work. You don't have to be in the office to get that. It's just a culture shift and "buy-in" for remote collaboration by everyone on the team and within the company. In my opinion, it's the key to global integration success. Matties: It sounds like—aside from your good housekeeping, staying on the VPN, and keep- ing your files in order—the security issue is driven by your IT department. Shaughnessy: Do you have design teams around the world? Chavez: We do. We have multiple business units strategically placed throughout the globe. For example, we have a division in Bengalu- ru, India, that is another engineering center. There are times where we'll work on a proj- ect and hand them data to work on overnight. But before the project even starts, there's so much internal structure that's set up. You must buy-in to global collaboration and commit to making sure that you're transporting technical data appropriately, it's approved, and that the data is non-ITAR. Who's accessing what data? At what access point are they accessing it? It's a lot of control. Shaughnessy: Can you tell us about your de- sign data transfer process? Chavez: I use Xpedition as my primary PCB de- sign tool in my daily tasks. If I am collabo- rating on a design with global team members, then at the end of my day, I zip up the design database and put it in our PLM system called Team Center. Then, I'll inform my col- league in Bengaluru, India, for ex- ample, that the design is there. I'll give them instructions about what I want them to work on overnight. I hand it off to them, and then I'll establish a hand-off teleconfer- ence. The time difference is 12.5 hours, so I'll set up a call at 8:00 p.m. for me in Arizona, which is 8:30 a.m. in their time zone.