CircuiTree - July 2008 - (Page 38)

Considering Design Variants to Maximize Process Efficiency John Peloso n today’s product environment, many products compose families of similar base-capability devices with increased feature sets deﬁning several different products. For example, a basecapability MP3 player may be available in a family featuring, say, 4 GB, 8 GB, or 12 GB of memory, each with a different model number. However, all of these family products can utilize a single PCB, with variations in the number or size of memory components. The example boards would be created exactly the same for the all-functions, but each would receive the population of the memory components as necessary for that model. These product-speciﬁc components become design variants. Each of these design variants requires documentation at every phase of design and manufacturing process as well. The documentation describes the components unique for that model, placement rules, and perhaps even variations to the silkscreen (in the case of depopulations). This documentation must be available for all steps of the process, and the result ripples through many design and manufacturing departments. New product designs require more and more design variants. The result is that population documentation is no longer optional but necessary. In a traditional PCB design process, electrical design teams rely on passing manually created external data back and forth with the physical design teams outside of the mainstream data path. This external data must, at some point, be reincorporated into the mainstream data path prior to releasing the product to manufacturing. This 38 July 2008 • circuitree.com I article will provide insight into how to efﬁciently reincorporate this external data. In addition, by inserting this data back into the process, graphical views of each design variant become available to all members of the PCB design team. These views can incorporate schematics for each variant, bill of materials (BOM) for each variant, comparison between variants, and the automated production of feeder ﬁles for the physical design team. The true power is found when including this data into the mainstream process and its affect after creating new design variant views. These views not only enable the entire PCB design team to become more efﬁcient but also ensure a higher reliability level. Why Use Variants? Companies deﬁne design variants for a variety of reasons. The most typical scenarios occur when several variations of the end product are needed to meet product speciﬁcations. This allows companies to produce a single PCB at the highest possible volume, which saves on production costs. The alternative would be to create multiple speciﬁc PCBs at a lower volume, increasing cost. An example of a mass market volume utilizing the same PCB can be found frequently in the wireless market. In this industry, by simply replacing a discrete component, such as a 10 k Ω resistor with 20 k Ω resistor, form, ﬁt, and function replacement can allow the end product to work on a different frequency. Other examples commonly include reduced memory capacity in a low-price version of an end product, http://circuitree.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CircuiTree - July 2008

CircuiTree - July 2008 Contents My Line Industry Review Tech Talk Flexible Thinking Toward a PCB Production Floor Metric for Go/No Go Testing of Lossy High-Speed Transmission Lines Intelligent Design 20-Year Retrospective Ask the Flexperts Environmentally Speaking BPA Growth Curves Considering Design Variants to Maximize Process Efficiency Market Outlook Technical Product Spotlights Classified Ads Upcoming Events Ad Index

CircuiTree - July 2008

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