Discussion: The demand and management of PLM system in EDA design field

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Discussion: The demand and management of PLM system in EDA design field [Copy link]

【 Introduction 】

　　Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a broad concept that includes product information management, where product information includes all processes from initial market definition, design, prototype, manufacturing, sales, and after-sales service from product creation to finalization. The PLM system is not a single data management system...

　　Understanding the PLM Domain

　　Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a broad concept that includes product information management, where product information includes all processes from initial market definition, design, prototype, manufacturing, sales, and after-sales service from product creation to termination. The PLM system is not a single data management system, but a collection of many systems and tools.

　　The main data in the PLM system is the necessary documents for product manufacturing. Usually, at least the production drawings of the manufactured product, the list of raw materials and purchased parts (typically included in the bill of materials {BOM}). There is usually some additional information, such as some special handling instructions in the manufacturing process, which is also included.

　　As time changes, when correcting product problems or product upgrades, some changes will be made to the product, and the details of the modification process must be recorded to ensure consistency with the supply and manufacturing process.

　　From the data associated with PLM, its direct quantity source should be design data, including the design of the mechanical part, the design data of the electronic part, and the software code.

　　Development History of PLM Applications

　　Current PLM vendors and systems all originated from the mechanical design industry. Engineering drawings were originally hand-made, but with the development of computers and the emergence of computer-aided design (CAD), it became possible to digitize engineering drawings and control them on computers. In the early 1980s, the EDA industry emerged. At this time, traditional CAD companies tried to enter the EDA market from the perspective of mechanical design, but found it difficult to compete with professional EDA companies in the field of electronic design. Today, despite many attempts, all mechanical CAD companies do not have a successful EDA product. The main reason for their failure in this new market is that they lack expertise in the field of electronic design. Since electronic data and mechanical data are fundamentally different in type and complexity, it is impossible to apply mechanical-based tools and technologies in the EDA field.

　　Therefore, most of today's PLM vendors have a good performance in managing MCAD design and data, and basically have integrated functions of MCAD tools. Other functions are also becoming more and more complete, such as project management, knowledge management, and gradually adding digital manufacturing solutions. However, for the management of EDA design and design data, the current PLM system does not have a good solution.

　　The need for PLM in the

　　EDA design field is different from the mechanical design field. Generally, there is a specific design process, from the front-end schematic design to the back-end PCB board design. The typical electronic design environment consists of multiple tools from multiple manufacturers. In extreme cases, different data management systems are required to support the differences between application tools. This inconsistency requires customized data management solutions when trying to understand and control the data of the entire electronic design portfolio.

　　Some of the large ECAD vendors have developed basic data management tools to support their customers. If your design tool flow mainly consists of tools from a single vendor, you can use the tools provided by these vendors as a basic library management and design data management solution. Unfortunately, most systems cannot support a mixed process of multiple vendors, nor can they easily connect to other data sources in the enterprise and bring information from these external systems to the designer's desktop. In addition, as designs become more and more complex and design teams become global teams, to improve team productivity, more and more experts will be required to work together, which also puts higher and higher requirements on collaborative work.

　　For EDA design engineering, the system needs to provide the following two aspects:

　　Provide designers with the necessary information to make the best design decisions

　　Manage and control design information to ensure data integrity during the design phase

　　Through these two steps, collaborative design is possible, which can balance global resources and improve the overall efficiency of the product development process.

　　Because design decisions have a huge impact on supply chain issues that affect cost, reliability and product manufacturing efficiency, it is very important to ensure that the design team has access to product-related information.

　　This information is usually about the device. Moreover, design engineers need to understand the technical details of the device to make the right design decisions, but they usually also need to understand business-related details. For example, a component validity issue, that is, whether it is an approved device, whether it is a preferred device, whether there are alternative suppliers, and other factors such as cost, safety, and environmental rating.

　　However, this information is not easy for designers to obtain. Usually they are contained in various business systems and cannot be obtained by designers. And this information is communicated through meetings, emails, telephone calls, etc. This type of communication is prone to errors and may cause information loss or data errors.

　　For companies that have already installed PLM systems, if this information cannot be integrated with system tools, users will have to retrieve this information in different systems and then select the appropriate components from the company's standard parts library, which is very inconvenient to use and cannot perform convenient association checks.

　　For the field of electronic design, current PLM systems provide some of the features it needs: such as the ability to create and manage the life cycle of objects, assign roles, save design data in a reliable place to ensure data integrity, use version management for design data, and provide role-based and life cycle status-based permission control. However, a key electronic design requirement for PLM systems is the ability to manage this data at a more detailed level than current PLM systems actually do.

　　EDA library management

　　Managing the design library of EDA tools is a key task when developing high-quality electronic products. Not only are EDA design libraries more complex than the corresponding MCAD libraries, but with the merger of companies, the EDA library environment has become more complex: having to face the management of multiple design libraries with different tool processes and different ECAD suppliers. Coupled with the difficulty of maintaining the consistency of EDA libraries in different regions (possibly across several continents), the demand is more clear: there is an urgent need for a method to manage and synchronize the branches of these different libraries.