Book Excerpt: 'The Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to... Manufacturing Driven Design,' Chapter 4

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Excerpt from: The Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to... Manufacturing Driven Design, Chapter 4—Concurrent and Intelligent DFM

Bridging the Gap

If Manufacturing Driven Design is to be considered as the eventual end goal of the larger product manufacturing process, it is worthwhile to consider where the current industry is in terms of adoption of this methodology. I spent a good deal of time in Chapter 3 specifically explaining what DFM is not. In this chapter, we will cover what, and where, DFM currently is. DFM has been evolving away from the rudimentary and manual selection Engineering Rules Files to an automated and intelligent means of assigning manufacturing process requirements based on design characteristics.

It could be suggested that DFM is meant to represent the manufacturers’ interpretations of the design requirements only from a process perspective. This may suggest that DFM should have been viewed as a transitional solution that is better off taken into consideration throughout the design process. Widespread technological adoption of MDD within the PCB industry has been rather cautious as a whole, especially when compared to similar fields which have already adopted an MDD approach. Many within the industry see the evolution of DFM as the end solution, instead of as a transitionary approach to manufacturing. Within late-stage DFM, there are several significant advancements that are now emerging which show promise in bridging the gap between Digital Rule Checks (DRCs) and MDD. These are the use of Concurrent DFM and Intelligent DFM.

Both concurrent and intelligent DFM complement each other within the typical workflow and represent the beginnings of a transition away from a classical DFM, allowing for an improved NPI process.

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