Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1348195
10 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2021 A few months ago. we decided to focus this issue on eliminating the "garbage in, garbage out." So many of our recent survey respon- dents pointed to bad or missing data as the pri- mary cause of their design woes that we knew we had a good topic. We wanted to touch base with some people in the industry who have their processes dialed in, pick their brains about ways to keep bad data out of the design, and determine our path forward. We started off by talking with Jen Kolar and Mark ompson of Monsoon Solutions, a com- pany that is constantly improving its processes by following the tenets of TQM. Monsoon is both a design bureau and provider of manufac- turing services, working with fabricators and assemblers around the world. Jen and Mark described the dozens of ways that a PCB design can go off the rails, almost all of them revolving around bad data finding its way into the design process. When they receive a design from a new customer, they become akin to PCB detectives. "Can we trust this designer's data?" "Is this their first con- trolled impedance design?" "Do we have to check every single aspect of this design?" I used to be a crime reporter for a daily newspaper, and Jen and Mark reminded me of some of the detectives I once interviewed, with one big difference: ey're trying to pre- vent a crime from happening, much like Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report. ink about it: Your job involves a lot of detective work. You need to assess the accuracy and completeness of data at every step of the design process. Our surveys show that undocumented changes to CAD library parts pose a big stumbling block for design- ers. Do you need to check every part in your library? The Shaughnessy Report by Andy Shaughnessy, I-CONNECT007 Validating Your Data Supply