Improving the productivity of complex electronic systems design by utilizing applied design methodologies

Abstract

The design process of complex electronic systems consists of four traditional main stages, which are system design, electronic design, mechanical design, and design for manufacturing. Even today when many integrated computer aided design environments are in use for electronic systems design, we still seem to accept that the design process really has to follow this path of four individual design stages. It is common that we are dealing with data transfer problems between different types of CAE-applications. However, there is a possibility to avoid the disadvantages due to integration problems between the design stages if we decide to develop the design methodology itself instead of developing those independent software applications. One effective way to improve the productivity of complex electronic systems design is to tune the so-called systematic design approach by adding special aspects of electronic systems design into the questionnaires used for collecting the requirement lists for further mechanical design and DFM. Another important tool is the carefully made manufacturability analysis. The deep interaction of mechanical and electronic design, extended by manufacturability analysis can also lead to innovative solutions as presented previously by the author. In the article entitled "Manufacturability Analysis-A Useful Subset of Systems Engineering" we were able to show that the number of iteration cycles during the different design and manufacturing stages could be reduced by 50% compared to the conventional design methodology. In this paper, we illustrate additional tools to continue this promising development work.