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Digital Transformation: It's Happening Everywhere—Be Ready

As I speak to customers around the world, I keep hearing the same question: “How can your company help us achieve our digital transformation goals?” I’m surprised how frequently this question is asked, especially by many of my customers who are preparing by appointing executives to lead entire digital transformation teams. In fact, these efforts often reach beyond the domain of IT and into the heart of business strategies that include end-consumer use-models, supply chains, design, manufacturing, and field maintenance. Analyst firm IDC projects¹ that by 2022, nearly $2 trillion will be spent on solutions and services to fuel digital transformation.

Before we go any further, it probably makes sense to define “digital transformation.” According to Deloitte, “digital transformation is about becoming a digital enterprise—an organization that uses technology to continuously evolve all aspects of its business models (what it offers, how it interacts with customers, and how it operates).”

A great example of a customer who is driving digital transformation into every aspect of its business is Polar, a leader in wearable training solutions for elite athletes. Polar’s goal is to integrate every aspect of design, mechanical, electronics and materials with user diagnostics in an effort to not just drive better product design, but to be more responsive to market needs in general.

Today, according to Lifecycle Insights², a full 58% of all development projects either incur additional costs or fail to meet their delivery commitments. This amounts to enormous opportunity loss due to missed market windows. The reason? Insufficient readiness due to increasing product complexity, organizational complexity, and process complexity. These challenges are only growing more extreme with the advent of 5G, AI, AR, autonomous systems, and IoT everywhere.

So, digital transformation strategies need to be formulated today, but this it isn’t easy, and I believe that there’s quite a lot of work ahead. The good news is that critical enabling technologies are available to close the digital transformation gap within electronics systems design. The challenge is establishing a programmatic approach to both methodology and technology adoption in order to get ready for a digital future. So, where do we focus?

1. Cross-domain collaboration. It’s amazing to me the degree to which silos still exist across so many different organizations, and this is after years of non-stop business-speak about the importance of tearing down silos. Look closely throughout the electronics industry and you’ll see these barriers everywhere, separating teams and groups whose collaboration is essential to success—mechanical/electronic co-design, FPGA/PCB, and even design and manufacturing. Silos still exist and they are costly. But they can be dismantled more easily than ever using digital enterprise strategies and technologies that are available today.
2. More verification, earlier in the cycle. Even with today’s complex designs, higher speeds, and advanced IC technologies, it remains quite common to see verification addressed in silos or within discrete groups. But, today it’s possible to digitalize a large portion of verification and sign-off processes, from the schematic to manufacturing and in between. And since digital technologies often abstract complexity and optimize efficiencies via automation, many of these checks can now be completed with little-to-no domain expertise.
3. Multi-board systems design. Many in our industry are still primarily designing systems by starting with a discrete PCB and then proceeding to more complex multiple-board systems, instead of starting at the system architecture and decomposing down into individual PCB logic and design. This approach not only fails to leverage the opportunity to make better decisions around trade-off and perform virtual simulation matter, but it also increases the risk of error associated with connectivity and signaling. Again, this can be handled today with readily available digital technologies.
4. Design data management. According to analyst firm Aberdeen³, almost 30% of a PCB engineering teams’ time is spent researching data—from component/libraries to work-in-process, to certified re-use of blocks. But establishing a formalized data management strategy is clearly the superior approach. In fact, it represents nothing less than the foundation of all digital transformation. And again, it can be achieved with technology that’s here today.

Digital transformation is a journey, and like any journey, preparation is critical. I’ve presented four areas where I believe the PCB systems design community can take steps—today—to increase the success of their digital transformation programs.

In future columns, we’ll dig more deeply into ideas, case studies, observations and other content intended to help you on your digital journey, whether you’re starting from the beginning, or already well on your way. 

References

1. Worldwide Semiannual Digital Transformation Spending Guide, IDC, November 2018.
2. Simulation and Verification for Board Development, Lifecycle Insights, October 2019.
3. PCB Design Data Management: Smaller Windows and Higher Complexity, Aberdeen, May 2016.

AJ Incorvaia is senior vice president, Electronic Board Systems Division, Siemens Digital Industries Software. 

This column originally appeared in the October 2021 issue of Design007 Magazine.