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The Shaughnessy Report: Will DWM Unite the Product Development Family?

In our industry, we just love our acronyms. Especially the “design fors” such as DFM, DFA, and DFT. We now have DFX, DFR, and even DFSC—design for supply chain.

The newest example is DWM, design with manufacturing, and this “design for” could wind up having a real effect on the PCB development process. If designers and manufacturers actually embrace this concept, DWM could do what DFM was never able to do: create a transparent communication environment for designers, fabricators, assemblers, and component and materials suppliers.

Even today, after two decades of talk about the need for DFM, the designer-manufacturer relationship resembles a happy but bumpy marriage. The spouses get along well, but they often give each other the silent treatment all week. And when Friday afternoon rolls around, the accusatory phone calls start:

Fabricator: Why didn’t you mention that you wanted controlled impedance on certain layers?
Designer: I thought I told you in the fab notes. Sorry about that.
Fabricator: Yeah, well, a little late for sorry.
Designer: I can’t even remember. I’ve moved on to another design.
Fabricator: You’ve moved on? Well, isn’t that just peachy! Just leave me to clean up your mess. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.
Designer: Here you go again…

DFM has a positive connotation in our minds. For many companies, a “DFM check” equals a successful design. But the DFM process itself is clearly not as effective as it could be. The average PCB design undergoes an average of 2.9 respins, according to a recent Lifecycle Insights study—stark evidence that DFM is not being embraced by all stakeholders. Designers and manufacturers often don’t begin communicating until many of the most critical, expensive layout decisions have already been made.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Now, DWM promises to get every stakeholder on the same sheet of music, from the beginning of the design process through box-build. You would know your fabricator’s sweet spot and preferred format for data package handoff. He would know your design intent from the word “go,” help you craft the perfect layer stackup, and be aware of your impedance needs before the 11th hour. And your EMS provider would know about any tough-to-find components far before your bare board arrived.

So, for this month's issue of Design007 Magazine, we asked our contributors to shine a spotlight on DWM: How do we initiate it, and what does DWM look like in action? Why should you embrace DWM? How can DWM succeed where DFM fell short, despite the industry’s best-laid plans? And when is DWM not necessary and just a waste of your fabricator’s time?

We started by interviewing Dana Korf, who explains the need to take the guesswork out of the designer-fabricator relationship, and how to stop making—and accepting—assumptions in the design cycle. Columnist Kelly Dack discusses the benefits of DWM’s total transparency among all stakeholders in the product development cycle, and how to open lines of communication between reluctant stakeholders. We also have an excerpt from a previous interview with Happy Holden, in which he details the history of DFM strategies from the earliest days of PCBs.

Next, Siemens’ Patrick McGoff takes a counterpoint position. As he points out, today’s EDA tools and design techniques already enable complete transparency between designers and manufacturers under the umbrella of DFM. Is DWM just another solution looking for a problem? Then, Altium’s Ted Pawela and MacroFab’s Misha Govshteyn discuss their recent Altimade partnership, which has created a transparent DWM environment for designers, fabricators, distributors, and EMS suppliers. Kyle Burk of KBJ Engineering explains that there are times to use a total DWM process, but every design is not going to need that sort of focus from your partners. And Scott Miller of Freedom CAD Services discusses their DWM process from a design bureau’s point of view, and how to implement such a process at your own company.

We also have stellar columns from our regular contributors: Barry Olney, Matt Stevenson, Steph Chavez, John Coonrod, Jade Bridges, and Joe Fjelstad.

Summer is here, and the design community is heating up too. See you next month.

This column appears in the June 2022 issue of Design007 Magazine.

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