Background

Modular circuit design allows engineers to create a set of electronics building blocks that can be reused and shared between products. The Circuit Block Manager facilitates reuse management and change control of a library of circuit blocks in a convenient and organized manner.

This brief video shows how simple it is to use a hierarchical schematic containing circuit blocks as the basis for a modular circuit block library within DS-CR.

My next blog post will show how to configure DS-CR with Circuit Block Manager – check back soon!

More information about modular circuit reuse can be found in these past Zuken Blog posts:

• Are you Making the Most of Modular Design With Design Reuse?

(For reference: https://blog.zuken.com/modular-design-reuse-1/)

• Circuit Modular Reuse Best Practices (Part 2)

(For reference:  https://blog.zuken.com/circuit-modular-reuse-best-practices/)

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Modular board design for improved function

Modular board design strikes the balance between two of the greatest challenges electronics manufacturers face today: to produce a variety of products at competitive prices. The method also cuts manufacturing problems and allows companies to bring products to market faster than ever before.

A modular system partitions the overall product or component into discrete, scalable, and reusable design modules, which include designs for boards within resistors, actuators, and integrated circuits—designs used again and again within a company’s product line. Engineers create the designs for these modules and then store them within a central library.

Then, rather than pulling components from a library of resistors and integrated circuits, the engineer pulls from the library of design modules. From there the engineer places the already-designed modules within the design for, say, an actuator, when needed.

Because they’re always available, are placed in a number of different designs, and are expected to operate at peak performance, the modules within the library must be optimized on a regular schedule. After all, when the individual modules that make up the component, part, or design, are optimized, the overall design itself is closer to functioning within specification.

Enter the Internet of Things

But no module can do it all. That’s why the engineer still needs to know exactly which module to use for the product he or she is creating. To determine that, he or she needs to know at what point a specific module will fail. A module that can’t withstand a certain number of rotations can’t be used within a part that will greatly exceed that number of rotations, after all.

This is where IoT comes in. The IoT can automatically collect detailed performance information and tracks in high detail and in real time the performance of nearly every device—and every module within that device–at minimal cost.

Without the IoT, modular design wouldn’t be nearly as powerful. That’s because the IoT captures real-world performance data on how modules function within the equipment they’re already a used within.

Predicting failure

The IoT data allows engineers to predict, based on a product, the module’s history–the point at which it will fail–and to determine the reason for the failure, known as failure analysis.

By knowing the point at which a module will fail, engineers can then choose the proper module for their component. They can even redesign the electronic modules, so they no longer fail in the way they’ve commonly failed in the past.

Let’s take the example of a board with four modules: the CPU core, the power-supply section, the base control module, and the fan control module. Now let’s say an engineer intends to use that board within a furnace that must function for at least 30,000 heating cycles.

With the modular designs that already exist within furnaces can connect to the IoT. Or, engineers can use the IoT to run diagnostics on a design prototype. Let’s say the information returned finds that one of those four modules fail at around 22,000 heating cycles. It won’t make the grade. The board can’t be used within the engineer’s furnace design. The engineer knows he or she will need to use another modular board that has been shown to withstand 30,000 heating cycles.

You can see that this type of predictive analysis made possible by information returned by the IoT isolates the behavior of the module as compared to the component. This, of course, saves design time and allows the proper boards to be used within components from the start.

The engineer saves design time by spending time designing the component, knowing the board within that component will meet specification.

Once the product is in the field, the IoT information lets engineers know when a module is about to fail so it can be easily swapped out before it creates a catastrophic failure that affects the rest of the component, or even the entire assembly or product.

Herein lies the profit

Having optimized modules to fit most needs housed within a common available library allows engineers to build them once and share them across their organization. Given that 80 percent of product design is reused from version to version, there’s a good chance the module will be used again and again.

That reduction in design time makes it possible to bring products to market faster, to increase revenues and enables new products to gain market share before they face serious competition.

For the best in modular board design, you also need to make use of the predictive failure information made possible by the IoT. This can be a new—and entirely profitable—way to think about doing business.

Learn more about how CR-8000 can address your toughest challenges and help you put modular board design into practice.

The post Modular Board Design: A Platform Approach to Increase Product Variants and Decrease Components appeared first on English.

Note: The following article appeared on September 24, 2018 in EETimes Internet of Things Design Line.

Using feedback from products in the field to continuously improve design modules used as the basis for product development can increase product performance and reliability and reduce development time.

OEMs have made enormous strides in feeding back information from the manufacturing process into design to increase process yields. Metrics important to customers such as performance, reliability and usability would be much more useful inputs to the design process, but traditionally they have been much more difficult to obtain. Now Internet of Things platforms can collect and analyze this information and modular design systems can present it to designers in context.

Read the rest here

The post How Connected Products and Modular Design Can Improve Your Product Quality appeared first on English.

In Part 1, I looked at the benefits of predictive failure analysis, along with a real world example using a typical home furnace. Now I’ll look at how you can move your product development process forward to take advantage of predictive failure analysis and, ultimately, improve your product quality? You may be surprised at how easily you can get game-changing benefits by making some design process changes and using proven technology…

Step 1: Switch from component-based design to function- or modular-based design

Today, electronic hardware is typically designed by placing components on a schematic. Moving to a module or function-based design process has a number of benefits. Modular design alone enables reuse and faster design cycles. But combine modular design with a design data management (DDM) platform and the benefits expand to include ownership, history, version control, and where-used and user-defined data. It’s like supercharging it! If there is a problem with the module, a DDM system enables comprehensive problem resolution by identifying every product that uses it.

Another key benefit is the notion of continuous improvement. The module owner can continually improve the quality (e.g. reliability, cost, manufacturability) and that change history is part of the module’s annotated data. The module’s annotated data also contains diagnostics that exercise the function and become part of the field diagnostics package. So if we stick with our example of the home furnace, it runs diagnostics on a module by module basis and reports back diagnostic codes that can identify the failures. Modular design is an emerging trend that should be considered with or without adoption of predictive failure analysis.

Step 2: Establish the IoT platform and the Cloud

This step goes beyond the scope of Zuken’s solutions and will require a partner. In this case, PTC offers an IoT Platform called ThingWorx®. The IoT platform provides the linkage between the device and the PLM system and, ultimately, to the design team via a design data management solution (e.g. DS-2).

In this case, the furnace runs diagnostics on a periodic basis and reports back the results and environmental conditions to the IoT platform, which is the collection point for the connected devices. It collects the data and runs analytics to determine if we have a failure trend that can be identified. We’re considering a manufacturer monitoring 500,000 furnaces, so let’s say the furnace population diagnostics indicate the gas control module on the furnace appears to be failing regularly at 5,000 heating cycles or about 4-5 years of usage, but it is designed for 20,000 heating cycles. The IoT platform is connected to the PLM system and that information is attached to the design record for this furnace model. If you have a design data management system connected to your PLM system, that gas control module performance record can be attached directly to the design module as annotated data. The design team now has everything they need to improve the quality of the gas control module.

Step 3: Device to Cloud Connection

As in step 2, I’m going to reference one of our partners to provide the device connectivity to the IoT platform. PTC’s Kepware® provides the communication channel for managing and monitoring your connected device. The furnace simply uses the Kepware connection to log diagnostics and environmental conditions to the cloud.

This is possible now!

The exciting part is that we can now measure the product performance in the hands of a customer, not just in the lab. Predictive failure analysis is attainable today. The pieces exist. But it does require a change in your design process from component-based to module-based design, which should be considered on its own merit. The IoT pieces are available and proven. Remember, the connected device has already been implemented and utilizes “Apps” that we all commonly use. We are just applying the same connectivity for the purpose of field performance measurement.

The opportunity exists now to measure and improve your product quality.

The post Predictive Failure Analysis Can Improve Product Quality: The Reality – Part 2 of 2 appeared first on English.

Today I’m going to take a step-by-step look at some circuit module reuse best practices, along with an example. The answers that I’ve kept you waiting for in part 1.

Managing modular circuit blocks

An increasingly popular and effective way of dealing with human errors creeping in when reusing designs (such as inadvertently using older block prior to an issue being resolved) is by using data management software that stores reusable circuitry as modular blocks. This greatly simplifies the process of reusing existing PCB schematics, parts lists and layouts.

The new generation of data management software controls access to circuit blocks, so only authorized editors can make changes. Editors need to check out the modular block and other users can’t make any changes to it until it’s checked back in, to ensure the design integrity. The software can also be configured to require approval when a change is made to a modular block.

Reusable modular blocks can be created in two different ways:

Top-down approach

1. Partition the design early on in the design process.
2. Create the block diagram, then add circuitry to each block.
3. Validate blocks and complete the design.
4. Register the parts list, schematic and layout of each block in the data management system, along with its metadata containing detail such as which products the block is used in, engineers involved in its design, and the approval chain.

Bottom-up approach

1. Create and validate the circuitry .
2. Partition the design into blocks.

You can see  how much more effort the top-down approach takes (four stages rather than two), and it requires more planning time. But the payoff is huge in that blocks produced this way are usually much more suitable for reuse, so you save lots of time later on when you reuse the blocks in variant designs. Put the work in at the start to reap the benefits later on down the line.

Streamlining the design process – cell phone example

Let’s look at how the modular design approach can substantially help streamline the design process for the cell phone example mentioned in part 1. We’ll assume that the design has been partitioned into blocks representing the RF, baseband, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other sections.

The engineer working on the new variant follows this simple process:

1. Call up the modules by searching the data management system for the product name.
2. Check the documentation stored in the system for each module they want to use, to ensure it is a good fit for the new design.
3. Drop the modular blocks into the new design. The parts list, schematic and layout of each modular block will all be incorporated into the new design.
4. Design the new RF block and any other new blocks needed, either from scratch or by modifying existing blocks.
5. Connect sections together and route new areas of the design.
6. Check the design
   1. Check for issues such as signal integrity and thermal management, focusing on the newly-routed areas.
   2. Do a basic simulation of the complete design; even though checked modules are used, there’s a small possibility combining them could cause an issue.

By designing this way, regulatory compliance time can be reduced by using proven design blocks. This reduction in design time means it’s possible to bring products to market faster, which helps increase revenue and enables new products to gain market share before they face serious competition. Modular circuit reuse also reduces errors by allowing designers to use proven designs wherever possible.

Is now a good time for you to make best use of modular design to help your team develop and release boards faster?

Learn more about engineering data management here, and view our webinars.

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The electronics industry has been doing it for decades. Software development too.

Although we’ve been talking about it for years, in PCB design it has yet to catch on in quite the same way despite there being a host of benefits to be reaped from modular design practices. So in the first of this two-part series I’d like to challenge you to ask yourself a few questions about how you reuse designs:

• Are you reusing as many of your designs as possible?
• Are you getting some benefits from reusing designs… but inadvertently creating new problems?

Some of the  benefits of reusing PCB modules for common functions, including:

• Avoiding potential signal integrity or thermal problems by using circuit data with proven performance.
• Reduction in time taken for schematic capture and PCB design leading to reduction in development costs.
• Fewer design errors.
• Ultimately, helping bring quality products to market faster.

Circuit design issues

In fact, efficient reuse is one of the key methods that companies are leveraging to become more competitive and keep up with the volume and frequency of new product introductions. The key word here is ‘efficient’. You maybe reusing some elements of your designs, but it’s being able to do it effectively that’s going to increase quality and improve your development process.

Reuse is getting more attention because much of the electronic content in electronics products has been commoditized, increasing amounts of functionality becoming consolidated in application processors or system-on-chips (SoCs) and their reference designs. Standardization of busses and protocols allow for even more reuse. Other factors include:

• Proliferation of electrical constraints.
• Stricter-than-ever requirements to maintain reliability.
• Manufacturability and compliance.
• Challenges using IC and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for high-speed design.

Current circuit reuse methods

When you need to produce a related product you might often copy and modify the original design, or use predefined modules from the original design. For example, a new cell phone variant might reuse the baseband, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules, combined with a new RF section.

But you can run into some potholes with this approach.

The perils of human data managers

In larger design teams, it can often be difficult to find a related design that fits the specific requirements of the current project, it’s a classic case of you can’t see the wood for the trees – sound familiar? There’s always the potential for the designer to inadvertently reuse a version of a related design that doesn’t include the latest changes.

Other issues that the cut and paste method can lead to include:

• Knowledge developed in creating the original design is typically lost. The copied blocks lack intelligence such as the underlying design methodology and best practices.
• Traceability – sometimes only one person knows the source of individual modules, so if a problem is discovered later on the designers of the new module may not even be aware of the change. The original error will be replicated and there’s the risk it may not be caught before the product is released, or that large costs are incurred by late-stage design changes.

Ouch, these kind of problems hurt. So now we’re on the same level, you know I’m with you there understanding the pain, I’m afraid I’m going to keep you hanging on a little longer, for the answers in part 2, where I look at methods for managing circuit modules, design best practice, and an example of streamlining the product design process.

In the meantime you might like to check out Zuken’s Design Force PCB design software.

Back soon…next week is my deadline, so I won’t keep you dangling for long.

The post Are you Making the Most of Modular Design With Design Reuse? Part 1 appeared first on English.