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60 The PCB Design Magazine • May 2017 by Guenther Schindler SCHINDLER & SCHILL GMBH Across different industries, manufacturers are achieving competitive advantages through the intelligence of machines. As a result, the role of electronics is becoming increasingly im- portant. Manufacturers no longer have all the time in the world, even in industries that up to now had been exempt from the extremely short product cycles of consumer electronics. One im- portant step towards shortening time-to-market is to make the development process more effi- cient by improving communication. The Easy- Logix software tool, PCB-Investigator, provides a single platform which brings together every aspect of a PCB throughout the production pro- cess and life cycle. During the production process, every step from circuit diagram through to electronic product involves processing, exporting and im- porting data by various experts using different systems. These transfers, imports and exports are exposed to possible errors. PDF and paper- based review sessions are often the only tools available for correcting errors. With a software- based review solution like PCB-Investigator, however, every participant in the process now has access to a CAD system, which is able to merge PCB data from various sources in order to analyse and visualize that data interactively. As a result, review processes are more reliable, more efficient and paperless. "Assembly is not possible in this way. Please check the data." Developers are regularly faced with this major problem, which is symptomat- ic of an industrywide weakness in the process. Development, layout, circuit board production and assembly, quality assurance, purchasing, sales—everyone within these departments will be working on the same product. Yet they all use different systems that focus on various as- pects in non-uniform data formats. Monitoring is crucial, given that errors may occur at any stage of the workflow and every time data is ex- ported to different CAD software or a different machine. The biggest challenge is that due to the lack of a uniform tool chain, reviews usually end up being conducted using PDFs. This means gen- erating a unique copy for every aspect. What's more, the finer details are difficult to recognize, the zoom function is awkward and displaying multiple diagrams side by side is impossible. ARTICLE