Digital tools enhance collaborative problem-solving.
The PCB design team gathers in the conference room for its weekly project review, but the atmosphere is tense and somber. Everyone feels the pressure as they realize the project is not meeting the planned timelines. Stress is palpable in the room as colleagues exchange worried glances and fidget with their notebooks and pens.
In this setting, raising issues or even red flags seems impossible. No one wants to add problems to the long list of delays, although they know those problems won’t go away; they will come back to haunt them.
And what about those analysis results they’re waiting for? Those are going to add another round or two of design cycles.
During the meeting, the team leader tries to maintain a sense of control and optimism, but the setbacks weigh heavily on everyone. The once lively discussions and brainstorming sessions have turned into heavy silences and strained expressions.
It’s not for nothing they call it the “war room.” This site often serves as the battleground for justifying delays, issues and concerns – especially when the customer or company leaders ask for the impossible. Projects frequently start with the team lacking some requirements or facing totally unrealistic deadlines.
As the meeting draws to a close, the team reluctantly accepts the need to put in extra hours and redouble its efforts to get the project back on track. But too often, even that’s not enough.
Siloed, fragmented and stressful: The traditional approach. The conventional war room approach attempts to bring all disciplines, including external suppliers, together for problem-solving and status tracking, but it has significant limitations:
- Fragmented communication: Critical issues often remain unresolved between scheduled meetings, delaying decision-making and increasing the risk of errors.
- Restricted expert access: Teams struggle to get timely input from domain specialists outside formal meetings, creating bottlenecks and delays. This challenge intensifies when team members are external to the company, such as consultants, who often lack direct access to the system. It gets even more complicated when ITAR adherence adds to the mix.
- Cross-disciplinary gaps: Communicating domain-specific challenges effectively and promptly across different areas of expertise can be difficult, leading to misunderstandings and reiterations of tasks due to incorrect data.
- Compromised simulation and analysis: Under tight schedules, essential validation processes are frequently reduced or omitted, raising the likelihood of costly design flaws. I have experienced this firsthand too many times in my career. That old saw that “you never have enough time to do it right, but you sure as heck have enough time to do it again” holds true and will come at a price!
- Heightened stress and risk of human error: The pressure of tight deadlines and a lack of real-time collaboration increases the probability of mistakes. The true cost exceeds human errors or mistakes; frustrated with legacy ecosystems staff may jump ship.
Teams operating in these conditions can still deliver results and achieve success, but at the cost of redundancy, inefficiency and reliance on key individuals, which indirectly introduces single points of failure. Inconsistent datasets compound the problem, leading to repeated tasks and unnecessary delays.
Integrated workflows work for the team. An integrated digital design flow eliminates these barriers by fostering seamless, real-time collaboration. This transformation unlocks multiple benefits.
Accelerated design cycles and first-pass success arise from enabling concurrent workflows, allowing teams to execute tasks in parallel rather than waiting for sequential handoffs. This approach significantly reduces overall project timelines. Continuous validation, simulation and analysis can catch potential issues early and minimize costly rework. Automated checks help identify problems before the prototyping stage, reducing iterations and improving final product quality. This allows multiple teams, such as hardware, software and mechanical engineers, to work simultaneously without dependencies slowing them down.
Other benefits include efficient, agile team collaboration and optimized resource utilization. Instant access to shared data enables cross-functional teams to engage dynamically and in real time, making informed decisions quickly and without delays. Engineers can see the impact of design changes across disciplines, improving coordination and reducing miscommunication. Real-time data synchronization eliminates redundant tasks and ensures all stakeholders work with the latest design revisions. Integrated workflows prevent rework caused by outdated or conflicting data, allowing teams to focus on innovation rather than administrative tasks.
An integrated digital design flow also reduces stress and human error. An integrated digital design flow also reduces stress and human error. Automated tools and integrated platforms help detect issues proactively, allowing engineers to focus on innovation rather than troubleshooting avoidable mistakes. Predictive analytics and AI-driven design assistants can enhance decision-making, reducing the need for human oversight. These capabilities help minimize stress and errors, enabling teams to work more efficiently and effectively.
Digital threads. Digital threads are interconnected data points that move through the different stages of a product's life. They provide a complete picture of the product, which helps with working together, making informed decisions and coming up with the best designs. The threads gather, combine and handle data across all the stages of a product's life. There are five essential digital threads for managing complexity in electronic systems design:
- Architecture digital thread: This thread focuses on the early architecture of a system, bridging the gap between high-level requirements and detailed design.
- Component digital thread: This thread addresses the vitality of the broken component data exchange paradigm. Standardized digital models of components through initiatives like JEDEC’s JEP30 standard is key to enhancing efficiency and reducing errors.
- Design data digital thread: This thread represents a sophisticated framework that seamlessly synchronizes varied design data elements within a digital landscape. For example, it coordinates ECAD and MCAD design data, enabling seamless collaboration and multi-domain simulations.
- Verification digital thread: Complexity drives the need for thorough verification. Establishing a digital thread that traces requirements, test cases and verification results fosters efficiency, enhances traceability and facilitates continuous verification throughout the development cycle.
- Manufacturing digital thread: The interaction between design and manufacturing is bidirectional. A robust manufacturing digital thread allows for continuous improvement by capturing manufacturing insights and enabling more informed, sustainable design decisions.
Figure 1. Digital threads for electronics systems (cores of full tapestry).
For a deeper dive and more in-depth understanding of digital threads, I highly recommend reading a white paper by Matt Bromley and Matthew Walsh titled “Mastering Complexity Leveraging Digital Threads for Electronics Systems Design and Manufacturing.”
The future of electronic systems design. Continued advancements in design tools will enhance cross-disciplinary integration and understanding. This will enable teams to visualize, via a digital twin, the impact of design decisions across domains in real time despite their individual logical locations. This enables a broader perspective for all individuals within the project team to work in a collaborative and harmonious methodology, with a better understanding of the impact that decisions within specific domains have on other domains.
The key here is getting total project team buy-in on this digitally integrated approach. This is where a collective-minded approach to a company’s or project team’s culture becomes the difference in the level of success and the manner, speed and ability to adapt to changes as a project unfolds. In this approach, each hurdle that presents itself can be seen and addressed by the “collective,” saving time, removing roadblocks and increasing quality of the final product.
The era of rigid, sequential workflows is fading, making way for a more flexible and optimized approach that empowers teams to achieve their best work, faster and with greater accuracy and efficiency.
Stephen Chavez is a senior printed circuit engineer with three decades’ experience. In his current role as a senior product marketing manager with Siemens EDA, his focus is on developing methodologies that assist customers in adopting a strategy for resilience and integrating the design-to-source intelligence insights from Supplyframe into design for resilience. He is an IPC Certified Master Instructor Trainer (MIT) for PCB design, IPC CID+, and a Certified Printed Circuit Designer (CPCD). He is chairman of the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA); This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
