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IPC recently partnered with Siemens for the development of IPC DFM profiles in PCBflow, a cloud-based platform that organizes manufacturers’ capabilities into DFM profiles, which helps designers ensure that they comply with their manufacturer’s capabilities and pick the right manufacturer for each job.
I recently spoke with a few technologists who have first-hand experience with PCBflow: Susan Kayesar, technical product manager with Siemens; Evgeny Makhline, CTO of Nistec, a CEM based in Israel; and Peter Tranitz, senior director of technology solutions and leader of the IPC Design Initiative. They explain how PCBflow functions, from the designer’s and manufacturer’s viewpoint, and how this database helps break down the wall between these stakeholders.
Andy Shaughnessy: Susan, give us a quick background on PCBflow and the DFM profiles.
Susan Kayesar: Sure. PCBflow is an online platform and collaboration space for designers and manufacturers in the electronics industry. We enable transparent transfer of information between designers and manufacturers, which is something that is sorely missing in the industry. At a very functional level, we allow designers to upload their designs into a secure environment online and grab sets of pre-made DFM profiles. Basically, these are rules that represent either the constraints that they're looking to comply with or the actual manufacturing environment. To date, we have many suppliers of DFM profiles that are a representation of the real-life manufacturing environment. You can test your design for compliance with those rules, and you can communicate freely with the manufacturer that has provided these DFM profiles.
Our friends at IPC see this platform as critical to their objective of promoting the transparent transfer of necessary information. IPC came on board and provided nine DFM profiles, which enable our users to test for compliance with various aspects of IPC design standards. Evgeny Makhline is one of our “power users,” and he can speak a little about how Nistec has been using those profiles.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the March 2024 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.
