Optimizing New Product Introductions
Getting complex, modern PCBs to volume production and to market on time is the responsibility of not only the manufacturer but also the printed circuit board (PCB) layout designer and new product introduction (NPI) engineer. Many steps need to be coordinated in the NPI process, from optimizing designs for manufacturing to communicating the PCB product model completely and clearly.
Decisions made during PCB layout directly affect the success of your NPI process. Any problem found by your supply chain will cause a delay at minimum or worse, costly scrap. And, if designs are reviewed differently by the PCB fabrication or assembly supplier than by the designer using EDA tools, yield, cost, and reliability risks remain high. As a result, leading electronic design companies have found that “left-shifting” Valor NPI technology concurrently into their PCB design process saves expensive revision spins and improves the quality of the final product.
Image: Valor DFM technology allows you to optimize your PCB design for manufacturing during the initial release process.
Concurrent DFM
Valor DFM technology brings you a competitive edge by running fabrication and assembly analysis before you even handoff to your partner in NPI. By applying DFM rules during layout that has been prepared for you by the NPI experts you have the best of both worlds: easy identification and fixing of fabrication process problems but without having to be a manufacturing-process expert.
Intelligent, Integrated NPI Product Model
All available data critical for manufacturing is extracted automatically from PCB CAD, including conversion of the designer’s parts list into the bill of materials (BOM), and transferred to the Valor NPI database for completion.
Additional content such as supply-chain level parts data from the unique Valor Parts Library, data-defining surface finishes, the exact assembly panel to be fabricated, and all data normally held in disconnected drawings and documentation is instead integrated into the single highly structured Valor NPI model of exactly what will be manufactured.
The enriched model of your PCB delivered from the Valor NPI database ensures that all your manufacturing suppliers, prototype or volume, build from the same definition.
Comprehensive DFM Analysis
Valor NPI verification software, based on 64-bit processing technology, analyzes all of your design technologies—FR4, rigid/flex, flex, and even packaging substrates—with more than 900 DFM checks. Each of these checks helps you to optimize your design for manufacturing during the initial design process.
DFM validation further categorizes and prioritizes the design-change requirements so that you may easily resolve the most critical issues first, either by direct crossprobing to Xpedition or by customized and filtered reports. The weight assigned to each check is userdefinable, enabling you to decide how the results should be prioritized.
Image: Manufacturing risk assessment of yield, cost, and reliability.
Panel Design and Optimization
Eliminate the need for other software tools to be used for the creation and optimization of your assembly panels, regardless of PCB shape. Include fiducials, tooling holes, breakaway tabs, and v-score features to create a complete assembly panel model. You can identify the lowest-cost fabrication panel configuration as well, all in a matter of minutes. Communicate the panel design as data to your suppliers, eliminating cycles for them to recreate and send back to you for approval.
Enhanced PCB Product Model Hand-Off
Valor NPI consolidates all data and information, defining exactly what is to be fabricated, assembled, and tested—what you expect to come back from the manufacturers.
Although the original source for the data is PCB CAD, all other information from your manufacturing documentation team can be directly integrated and verified as structured data as part of the NPI flow.
The resulting ODB++ data package contains everything the fabrication, assembly, and test software tools need to know about your product to proceed efficiently and promptly with process preparation. You also have unlimited ODB++ viewing capabilities on your Valor NPI network, for sharing and reviewing PCB designs with your team.
Synchronized with Your Supply Chain
The Valor NPI DFM technology was developed by the same people that created the DFM verification tools used by more PCB fabricators and contract assembly companies than any other system. Collaborating with the DFM experts in your manufacturing supply chain, you can truly left-shift the manufacturing process constraint-rules into your design and NPI operations.
By using the same rules and even the same settings to simulate how your suppliers will review your design, you will minimize call-backs and engineering-change requests from your manufacturers, taking cost and time out of the full NPI cycle.
Benefits
- Enables concurrent DFM optimization in design
- Delivers leading DFM technology for minimum design-revision spins in NPI and ramp-to-volume
- Provides final generation and validation of the PCB product-model for manufacturing
- Supports PCB fabrication, assembly and test
- Facilitates an integrated NPI flow from designer’s desktop into process preparation
- Leverages the ODB++ intelligent data format to optimize data exchange between design, fabrication, assembly and test