Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1417991
28 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 product model going back the other way, so they can then do their value-add, which is the tooling for manufacturing. Here's my Excel analogy. Imagine that all of us on this call were working on a project, and it required a spreadsheet. I start it and I create my spreadsheet with its multiple tabs. I've got formatting and formulas and illustrations in it, font, and calculations, and whatever you want to add to it. Aer I'm done with my part of it, I would say, "Andy, your turn," but instead of sending you the Excel file, I send you a Word doc or a text file that instructs you how to rec- reate it yourself, and cut and paste and create your Excel file from what I send you in that text file. How happy would you be? at's the same thing the industry is doing by sending legacy data to their suppliers. ey're handcuffing them, saying, "I'm making you be inefficient." Now, the suppli- ers are always receptive to do whatever they need to do to get a customer's business, so try to picture any salesperson in any indus- try that says "no" quickly. ey don't. It's not their job and you would fire them if they did say "no" quickly. e status quo remains in effect because of the commercial impact. Whether they charge a different NRE for it is a different story, but they're always going to say yes. Feinberg: is is true. McGoff: anks. We consider it our mission to help customers see the light and prove it out, and we do this constantly. I'm not allowed to say the name of the U.S. chip company we did this with, but we engaged in the process of showing them the inefficiencies. ey went through a six-month process with their suppli- ers, getting them onboard, exchanging some pilot data and doing it in parallel with the legacy data package. en, they saw no down- side aer all that was fleshed out, and for eight years now they've exclusively used ODB++. Shaughnessy: Are you noticing that younger people coming into the industry are a little bit more interested in embracing ODB than the "graybeards" with 40 years under their belt? Are you noticing any trends like that? McGoff: Andy, we are not collecting any kind of age records when people register for the Viewer or anything else. I can't say this empiri- cally, but when we had our initial meeting with that IC company that we worked with to convert to ODB++, I brought along two dif- ferent props for show and tell. I brought an eye loupe, for those of you that remember eye loupes, and a Gerber aperture wheel. In the conference room at the customer's site, I think the average age was 30. I went around the room and let them pass the props around, and then I asked them if they knew what they were. None of them could tell me what either of the props were. I told them that you may be doing leading- edge technology, but you're limited by this aperture wheel you're holding. ey asked me to explain, which I did. I said, "Everything is based on draws, flashes, and floods on this format. ere's data that has no bearing on the ICs you're producing today, and all the handicaps that go with that." We've got new people on our staff that helped us invigorate in ways we weren't thinking about, so maybe that will bleed through on the format discus- sions, too. The suppliers are always receptive to do whatever they need to do to get a customer's business, so try to picture any salesperson in any industry that says "no" quickly. They don't.