Gaining Traction in Electronic Product Development
Diane Benjuya, Marketing Projects Manager at SMARTEAM Corporation interviewed Yannick Wittner, Dassault Systemes' Electronics Domain Leader on the growing demand for PLM in the electronics market

SMARTEAM (ST): In today's complex market, an enormous number of products contain electronics components. How do you define the electronics domain?
Y. Wittner: It's a huge area. We are keenly aware that electronics content is increasingly prevalent in all sectors of the economy. We focus on the OEMs and suppliers in those categories in which we feel the growth opportunity for PLM is particularly strong - industrial OEMs (control and instrumentation, power and distribution, medical), consumer electronics OEMs (Audio, Video, Photo), and electronic and electrical component suppliers.

ST: How important is PLM to the electronics industry?
Y. Wittner: PLM accounts for about 35% of the IT investment made by the electronics industry. We see that a major aim of investment is improving the end-to-end design process by adopting collaborative working procedures, as well as by integrating design chain partners. OEMs are investing in improving supply chain execution by coordinating efforts across multiple sites and by outsourcing production. The electronics industry, characterized by complex products with short product lifecycles, is particularly well suited to PLM.

ST: What are some of the main industry pains that encourage electronics manufacturers to seek PLM solutions?
Y. Wittner: We've spent considerable time identifying and narrowing down the pains, which seem to be shared across the electronics industry regardless of specific industry segment. We find that the key pains are the manufacturers' need to:

• Deliver the right product, to the right place, at the right time
• Make accurate decisions based on relevant information
• Adapt to rapidly changing customer needs and behaviors
• Upgrade a product's technology rapidly, including the need to accommodate the increasing complexity of products and processes.
• Cope with the challenges posed by increased globalization and international competition in the electronics market
• Maintain profitability despite the rising costs of product development and fabrication

ST: What are companies doing to alleviate these pains?
Y. Wittner: electronics manufacturers cope with these challenges by increasing their reliance upon contract manufacturing and by globalizing their product design and manufacturing operations. The success of the move to these efficient production modes will depend on the electronic manufacturer's ability to optimally manage the core aspects of the product lifecycle. Here SMARTEAM delivers its key value, enabling design reuse, product and services differentiation, and tighter control over the development and manufacturing processes. In these areas, SMARTEAM is of great benefit. The approach that Dassault Systemes has taken to assist electronics manufacturers revolves around:

• Increased part and project re-use
• Rapid and frequent releases of derivative products
• Differentiating products from their competition by means of improved product design (such as in health care and consumer products)
• Differentiating products from their competition by means of augmented services to customer
• Improved efficiency and control by use of fewer suppliers
• Auditable product document management
• Earlier issue identification and management
• Improved management of Integrated Circuits

ST: How do SMARTEAM solutions play a role in these "pain-relief" efforts?
Y. Wittner: SMARTEAM offers value in three key areas: innovation, collaboration, and adaptability to customer requirements.

ST: What do you mean by "Innovation"?
Y. Wittner:
Mechanical design solutions should drive product innovation. Innovation is possible when you have the "yin-yang" combination of imposed, standardized processes and freewheeling think time. By introducing processes that make work proceed more efficiently, SMARTEAM solutions create the environment and free time that are conducive to generating innovation among design team members. Furthermore, SMARTEAM's knowledge management processes help users avoid work-duplication across all stages of product development. By ensuring easy access to prior projects and facilitating new project start-ups based on existing intellectual property, SMARTEAM frees engineers to innovate.

ST: And Collaboration?
Y. Wittner: Manufacturers need an effective collaborative workplace--that is, a development environment that enables collaboration in several areas: simultaneous, distributed access to controlled product information, a federated view on disciplines, and workflows and BOM management capabilities, such as BOM costing. It is also critical that the collaborative workspace facilitate the easy storage and retrieval of product information.

The SMARTEAM portfolio provides a collaborative workplace that achieves these aims, optimizing management of the product development process. Beyond its sophisticated concurrent engineering features, SMARTEAM provides the desired "big picture" or overview of a product's structure and documentation which, combined with powerful workflow features and BOM management, enables better collaboration across disciplines, organizations and roles, for faster new product introduction. SMARTEAM's BOM management offering includes export capability that improves control over data exchange with customers, suppliers and contract manufacturers. In addition, we deliver a ST template especially developed for the needs of the electronics industry. It includes:

• Specification-driven project morphing
• Automated product structure creation with reference designators checks
• Enhanced navigation on multiple BOM interrelationships
• Vendor selection and new part approval process
• Sourcing Selection
• ECR, BOM collaboration

ST: And how does SMARTEAM improve adaptability to customer demands?
Y. Wittner: SMARTEAM allows an organization to adjust its products to meet changing market requirements by enabling "late" changes to styling or internal packaging and by supporting the faster evaluation of a design through cross-discipline decision-making. The SMARTEAM templates provide for more efficient project & product morphing, and for integrated simulations. SMARTEAM also promotes component re-use. This capability supports an organization's aim of reusing corporate knowledge.

ST: Has Dassault Systemes really developed best practices enabling electronics manufacturers to efficiently benefit from PLM?
Y. Wittner: By combining its experience and know-how from a huge number of electronics sector projects, the Dassault Systemes' group has compiled a Best Practices approach that considerably reduces the investment of time and resources required to configure, install and operate a PLM implementation.

For example, in the area of bidding, SMARTEAM enables the manufacturer to rapidly find an appropriate existing assembly in the database and substitute components as needed, instantly assembling as per specific bid requirements all required MCAD and EDA designs, spec sheets, supplemental documentation, proofs of standards compliance and related QA documentation. Moreover, using SMARTEAM BOM management tools along with the updated documentation, the manufacturer has simultaneously created an updated Bill of Materials combining mechanical data, electrical data and embedded software with reference documentation, complete with part and component numbers, supplier details and full cost visibility, letting the manufacturer ensure profitable bids and win more projects.

There are more best practices, covering Supplier Relations Management, Project and Program Management, System Engineering, Integrated Product Development, etc…. - but a discussion of all these will have to wait for another opportunity!!!