Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/929192
28 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2018 of the enclosure on the face panel PCB, with the board edge penetrating the plastic shell. The critical aspect of connection manage- ment and board-to-board signals is also auto- mated for the user in proper multi-board system design tools. A Connection Manager coupled with a unified engineering change order pro- cess allows omni-directional synchronization of connector pinouts from one board to another, and the user can easily highlight signal paths throughout the assembly to guarantee no mis- takes are made on signal assignments. It's easy to overlook the collaborative aspect of this. Many new products being developed for smart home, automotive and other IoT appli- cations rely on reusing known-good modules. Startups with a great idea often cannot spend time re-designing their boards for the compute section of the product. Instead, during the bootstrap phase, they often opt for combining low-cost open source COTS modules with their own interfaces and software to reduce spin-up time. Having proper multi-board capabilities allows them to bring in those externally devel- oped modules quickly without running into connectivity or mechanical interference errors. Real-time collaboration with MCAD is also key for product development teams who are centered on the aesthetics and outward design. Having ECO automation between ECAD and MCAD is necessary to achieve maximum productivity in that environment. Supply Chain Automation A successful product launch can have a certain sting in the tail: demand surge. Demand surge is when, after initial trial of a new product, the market acceptance of the new product spreads rapidly and demand increases sharply. Sometimes this can also happen due to unforeseen events: for example, earthquakes taking down a com - petitor's factory. In any case, any r easonable business needs to be able to respond rapidly or risk losing their mar- ket share. The problem is, how can you be sure your supply chain, particularly for the compo- nents in your design, has everything you need to ramp up additional production runs? Additionally, it's all too easy for inexperi- enced designers to utilize components which electronically would be suitable for their prod- uct, but which have unstable supply. This often is manifested painfully through the abil- ity to get the parts easily in small quantities, which gives engineers a false sense of security about the part's availability, during success- ful prototyping phases of the design process. Once the design progresses past prototype and test to scale up and then to production, you discover the hard way that those new-fangled engineering samples you were sold during the design of the board are still not in full scale production and you have to wait! What is needed is bill of materials (BOM) automation, that allows designers to check the list of components used in the design against live supply chain data, and allows alternative suppliers and drop-in replacements to be found quickly before generating outputs and wasting time on outdated production data. Figure 3 shows this in principle: The list of BOM checks Figure 3: BOM scrubbing and rules checking (Source: Altium LLC 2017).