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32 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2022 will use DFM to assess the difficulty of having to rework a given component and factor that into their quote. at's information a designer would like to know before it's too late to do anything about it. We should also remember that the commer- cial aspects of components add a risk to the manufacturing cycle. True DFM encompasses tools for mitigating that risk and providing vis- ibility of choices to the design OEM for factors such as availability, cost, and obsolescence. is is what design for manufacturing has evolved to be today. ere are established platforms and applications that enable all the partners in a supply chain to collaborate with ease in a digital manner. While it is good to see other EDA companies finally realize the importance of DFM, we don't need a new name for the rose. e one we have smells quite sweet. DESIGN007 Patrick McGoff is market development manager, Embedded Board Solutions, Siemens EDA. By Nitin Bhagwath For any sizable design, PCBs are usually designed by a team of multiple design engineers (EEs) creat- ing the schematic and multiple layout designers plac- ing all the parts on the board and routing the traces. These teams often work with an extended team of experts in the supply chain, signal integrity, and mechanical and thermal analysis. Engineering man- agement also has a stake in the design process, as it monitors design progress, resources, and schedul- ing. For a successful design, this multitude of interac- tions requires mandatory mechanisms to keep every- one on the same page during the design process. Design teams worldwide are running into prob- lems with supply chains (see All Systems Go! Supply Chain Woes—Which Comes First, the Design or the BOM?). Consequently, it's critical that designs not use obsolete parts or parts that cannot be sourced. Therefore, good communication and coordination systems must be in place between the design and the supply chain teams. Similarly, if someone has made a change in the design and believes, erroneously, that they have communicated this to you, you could be working from bad assumptions. In contrast, if you make a change that isn't communicated to the greater team, everyone else could be working off a false premise. Another common situation is for someone to make a perfectly valid change, which is commu- nicated to everyone who needs to know. Still, the reason for the change is lost because it wasn't doc- umented anywhere (or maybe it was, but no one remembers where this document resides, which amounts to the same thing). These scenarios hap- pen far more often than most people think. At this very minute, design engineers and layout design- ers around the globe are looking at their computer screens, saying, "Who did this?" Or, "I know I did this, but why did I do it?" Or, "This made sense when we did it, but it's not working as planned, so why did we choose to do things this way?" This can become overwhelming, especially if you don't know whether you have access to the latest information. Teams often develop workarounds (aka Band-aids) to address these problems. Nitin Bhagwath is director of product manage- ment, PCB front end, at Cadence Design Systems. To read this entire column, click here. COLUMN EXCERPT: All Systems Go Electronic Data Management—Can You Design Without It?