Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1406534
18 SMT007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2021 Matties: ere are a lot of dependencies on a BOM that you may not think of: plant mainte- nance and production planning would be de- pendent on the BOMs. What's your thought about how other functions within an organi- zation utilize a BOM separate from purchasing and manufacturing? Ford: One of the biggest problems between the world of electronics and the world of mechani- cal engineering is the unspoken rule that things should not touch. You can do your circuit board design in the best way you can, but it must fit in this complex assembly, no matter what choice of materials that production may de- cide to use, and sometimes it just doesn't. at can be really embarrassing. T h e B O M i s t h e r e p resenta- tive o f t h e e l - ements that go into that 3 D s p a c e . T h e n y o u start to model the assembly in terms of physical space, ther- mal space, and even traits like shock and trau- ma that any product may suf- fer. e BOM and the associated information drives everything about that product, from design through manufac- turing and on into the market. Holden: I was thinking that, in many ways, the PCB designer is only there for a very short time at the very beginning, but the product may have a long life. In that long life, there will still be a product manager and somebody in mar- keting because they may have to make compo- nent changes. ey may have variants that they find sell better which are just minor adjustments in the schematic or bill of material. Eventually there will be obsolescence. But it also includes re- pair and rework and disposal or whether that is going to be recycled. But the one that is probably toughest to ex- plain is why these three different worlds—de- sign, fabrication, and assembly—are so com- plicated and require so much study. ey need some vector that connects them together, a standard to deal with increasing complexities, because nobody is going to know all three dis- ciplines to the detail necessary, unless they de- pend on the database that is part of the BOM. Ford: Seeing how this data can be utilized out into the market is especially interest- ing, which does include repair, servicing, i n - s e r v i c e a s - s e s s m e n t u s i n g t e - lemetr y data, f or example, in air- p lane eng ine s, a n d t h i n g s like that, see- ing how the product per- f o r m a n c e matches up with the specific appli- cable manufacturing, materials and design data, all together providing oppor- tunity for improvement. e whole lifecycle ends up being a huge circular diagram, with design, manufactur- ing, and market to end-of-life cycles, repeated- ly—like a wheel that keeps on turning, getting better each time. It might turn every three to six months for consumer products, or every 25 years for key elements of an airplane or simi- lar. e product becomes better each time be- cause we're learning, relating design intent to actual product use-cases. e real tragedy is that almost all this information and opportuni- ty is lost right now. Some information is retained within each "silo," that understands perfectly what they're