IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1545404
74 I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2026 layout to let the RF team do their thing, etc. It has the potential to significantly reduce design and product development cycle times. The second benefit is higher reliability and higher first-pass yields. By having all the disciplines work on this design simultaneously, there's a much higher probability that we'll see better designs sooner in the total product development cycle. The constant feedback cycle allows for smaller change requests to be addressed in real time throughout the product development cycle. Taking the RF example again, in co-design, the RF team does their thing, passes it back to PCB layout, which then passes it over to mechanical. Let's say that when it comes back to RF for review, they can see that the placement over in this one area with the housing has now interfered with the antenna signal path. That specific designer needs to go back in and change this part of their design. Issues are getting addressed as they are observed. Will co-design reduce the need for full design revisions? Yes, it is likely to reduce design revisions. But more than that, it's likely to give better first pass yields for a higher first pass success rate. Regardless of revisions, it will reduce your design cycle time by eliminating the built-in pauses to let the next team or engineer do their part, since engineers are all working simultaneously. Instead of working with multiple sets of data files, every- one's design work is now compiled into a single central data set. You can see in real time how small changes requested by one area affect another, so you get more timely feedback and responses. Are these positive cost implications? Yes, there's significant potential to reduce the raw or total cost to build. That's the third benefit. You reduce your development costs by reducing cycle time, the likelihood of failures, and the number of revisions needed, all of which mean a shorter time to market. That's huge for profitability. So, why are we not doing co-design more widely? Is it something that sounds great theoretically, but isn't so easy practically? Well, not all businesses have a full staff of engi- neers across multiple disciplines. If you rely on a third party for some of your design work, such as an RF expert, you still need the traditional concur- rent design approach: reaching a certain point in the PCB layout before passing it off to the RF engi- neering firm to do their part, and then waiting for them to finish before you get that design back for further work. Another barrier is data and cybersecurity. In mili- tary, aerospace, and defense designs, the sensitive nature of some information may include classified parameters, for which not all design engineers have the security clearance or authorization to see all aspects of a design. So, when certain parts of a system must be designed within a restricted envi- ronment, concurrent design is the logical way to work through a total system design workflow. A third reason is that the CAD tools a company uses can't integrate data across systems and disci- plines. That is still the case for many smaller compa- nies. Contractors may not be privy to all their manu- facturing partners for the total system. In those cases, investing in advanced CAD tools that enable the kind of integration co-design requires may not be feasible or practical. Which tools support this level of co-design? The Tier 1 tools, all the big, established names everyone knows. Many startups use Tier 2 tools that may or may not support co-design capability. They are just not yet at the point in their organiza- " This software can organize, control, and track product-related data throughout engineering, manufacturing, and operations processes."