Worldwide Systems Consulting: Tools, Process, People

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

In Munich for productronica, Editor Andy Shaughnessy and Publisher Barry Matties sat down with Mentor’s Jay Gorajia, director of worldwide systems consulting. Gorajia discussed Mentor’s systems consulting business, their focus on the “digital twin,” and how their acquisition by Siemens is benefitting Mentor and their customers.

Andy Shaughnessy: Jay, please give us a background on what worldwide systems consulting entails for Mentor.

Jay Gorajia: First, a little about consulting in general. Mentor focuses on many different areas, although our strength has been in the EDA market, and more specifically, the IC design, simulation, verification and validation flow, and PCB design, simulation, verification and validation flow. We are organized into four main consulting groups, two focusing on IC design, simulation, verification and DFT, one focusing on cabling design, wire harness design and services around products for design and manufacturing of wires and wire harnesses, and the group I manage, focusing on PCB design, simulation, verification and validation as well as serving electronic manufacturing business. The electronic manufacturing business came into Mentor about six years ago, with the acquisition of Valor. My group specifically focuses on PCB design, simulation, validation and enterprise data management, component engineering consulting, as well as the electronics manufacturing industry to help customers with methodology services, and services around either automating, integrating, or further leveraging the Mentor suite of tools. In short, we help customers achieve value realization from either software or equipment they've purchased.

On the PCB side, in addition to the full breadth of PCB design, component management, analysis and simulation tools, we also have a team focused on integration of PLM and integration with various other ecosystems to optimize that value chain.

We’ve embarked on a mission of the digital enterprise. The digital enterprise as a concept means we're moving to help organizations virtually ideate, simulate, and emulate, as much as possible before product designs get into the real world of manufacturing where costs are applied for real materials, for real assets, for real production and production time consumed. Since being acquired by Siemens, we are core to the strategy for a digital twin, when it comes to the electronics flow, as a key part of the digital enterprise strategy.

Shaughnessy: Tell me more about the “digital twin.”  

Gorajia: A digital twin is literally a virtual version of a product and the physics-based models around it and everything one needs to do physically. A virtual product model, in which you would, in the design stages, perform all the simulation, validation, and analysis whether it's thermal characteristics, signal integrity characteristics or design for manufacturing analysis. Then, as we move into manufacturing, how can we simulate what the manufacturing environments would be? How do we design for manufacturing? How do we simulate the process engineering and manufacturing engineering for the product? What equipment is best to be run for this particular product at what time and how? What are the parameters of those and what are the constraints (cost optimization, material availability, asset availability)? Do as much of that product engineering offline as possible without tying up physical assets.

To read this entire article, which appeared in the February 2018 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.

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