One Design, Many Minds: From Concurrent to Co-design

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

For decades, hardware development has often looked like a relay race: Work is handed from the mechanical team to the electrical team to the RF team, and eventually back again, hopefully without too many expensive surprises waiting at the finish line. But as products become smaller, faster, smarter, and far more complex, that old-school “over-the-wall” workflow is starting to show its cracks.

Co-design is a more integrated, collaborative approach that promises to shrink design cycles, improve first-pass success, and maybe even save engineers from a few stress-induced headaches along the way.

In this conversation, Kristin Moyer, a design instructor for the Global Electronics Association, explains the difference between concurrent and co-design, why the shift matters now, and how the future of hardware development may depend less on silos and more on everyone learning to work from the same digital playbook.

Marcy LaRont: Kristin, this month we’re focusing on potential substantive differences between old-school and new-school thinking. Specifically, let’s talk here about concurrent vs. co-design. Can you define both and give an operational example of each approach being implemented?

Kristin Moyer: Concurrent design has always meant that the multiple different silos of design—mechanical design, electrical design, etc.—are happening simultaneously but in their own silos: The mechanical engineering team designs the enclosure, and in parallel, the electrical engineer does the circuit design and PCB layout with just a basic concept of the enclosure and the mounting.

Then, they get together at the end of each design phase to review how all the pieces fit together. If they don’t fit, it’s back to the drawing board for the affected design groups. This is one of the reasons for revision cycles in product development.

LaRont: Isn’t that a logistics challenge?

Moyer: It is. A major drawback of concurrent design is time and flow issues. It requires that the different aspects or disciplines of design be carried out in order, which creates many start-stops for individual designers. For an RF product, for example, the regular PCB designer has to stop their work and hand the design over to the RF engineer, who can then continue laying out the board. Once it comes back, the designer continues from where the RF engineer left off.

To continue reading this article, which appeared in the June 2026 I-Connect007 Magazine, click here.