Better by design

On the face of it, the term ‘design for manufacture’ would appear to be redundant. Surely, you might ask, every product is designed to be manufactured. And the answer to that is yes. But there is a qualification; not everything that is designed can actually be made. The reasons for this are many and varied – everything from poor design practices in the first place to poor manufacturers at the end of the process. In the silicon world, design for manufacturing – or DFM – has become one of the central design concepts. And that’s no surprise, bearing in mind the huge and increasing cost of creating chips. But DFM, along with design for fabrication (DFF), design for test (DFT) and design for assembly (DFA), are terms which are finding increased use in more traditional areas of the electronics industry – and in pcb design and manufacture in particular. John Isaac is director of system market development with Mentor Graphics’ systems design division. He said the company realises there are a few areas where it can help to improve the ability of its customers to produce products at lower cost, higher quality and faster. But, noting that DFM is of increasing importance, he noted: “That not only relates to some of the activities we have going on now, but also to future developments.” Steve Hughes, Mentor’s pcb product manager, added: “Over the last couple of years, DFM for pcbs has become a more critical part of the design flow. Before, most of this effort was in managing and using third party tools, but customers now want to keep ownership of manufacturing data.”