Lost in translation?

Communications among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers, and original design and manufacturing (ODM) providers are critical. No matter what combination of OEMs, EMSs, and ODMs bring your products to market, you can use manufacturing process

Without effective management of all the stages in the manufacturing process, a supplier can experience delays and increased costs, and it can suffer a poor customer image because of numerous review and rework cycles, slow response times, and little or no visibility into the supplier's manufacturing process. Open and scalable MPM software provides a collaborative environment for authoring, simulating, and managing manufacturing processes across an enterprise, whether they are handled in a single facility or throughout the world. With MPM, you can adopt a "plan anywhere, build anywhere" strategy. The goal is to create an environment in which all supply-chain partners have access to the same body of manufacturing data, allowing them to follow consistent processes throughout the product-planning and manufacturing-execution stages.

MPM is the "how"

A manufacturer's typical system includes computer-aided design (CAD) and project-data management (PDM) systems. These systems describe and manage the data of "what" needs to be manufactured. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) are the "when and where" systems that address activities on the shop floor and in the shipping department. By linking the "what" and the "when and where," MPM becomes the system that describes "how" the product should be manufactured (Figure 1 ).

Outsourcing challenges

No matter what your manufacturing outsourcing strategy is, you must meet three key challenges:

• Management of new product introductions (NPIs). MPM provides a way to verify design-for-manufacture (DFM) rules—including design for assembly (DFA) and design for test (DFT)—and it can help you implement a process flow that contains all the steps in the test and inspection process, guiding the user from CAD and bill of material (BOM) input, through probe selection and fixture design, to the programming of test, inspection, and assembly equipment.

• Management of engineering change orders (ECOs). MPM software can track the updates that must occur, including part-number changes; documentation updates; fixturing changes; and test, inspection, and assembly equipment reprogramming. It can also notify other parts of the system about new ECOs and can verify the DFM rules on all requested changes.

• Management of manufacturing orders. At any time during manufacturing, manufacturers must be able to check on the work in process to evaluate product quality and yield and also to communicate the order status to others in the enterprise as well as to customers. MPM software can include customer portals that provide real-time "visibility" into the manufacturing process, helping to assure customers that suppliers can meet delivery commitments at acceptable quality levels.

Managing NPIs

MPM tools enable a manufacturer, its extended enterprise, and its customers to collaboratively create and manage NPI processes, including test, inspection, and assembly. MPM promotes seamless connectivity and communication across an enterprise, regardless of language or geography. Thus, new processes can be rolled out to manufacturing centers anywhere in the world. The value of MPM is evident early in the process, as it lets you import CAD files from many different CAD tools (see "Importing CAD files" and "Working with a data-neutral file format" in the online version of this article atwww.tmworld.com/archives ).

Being able to work with and manage source CAD data early in the design process allows the production staff to plan operations earlier and give input to the designers. Production engineers can check design rules and confirm testability before committing to expensive fixturing; this also reduces the time required for creating test programs and backup documentation.

Applying both DFM and DFT rules to the CAD data can yield valuable results. Being able to graphically show areas where DFM rules are being violated enables manufacturers to resolve potential problems before manufacturing starts. For DFT, accessibility reports (Figure 2 ) and test coverage reports permit early assessment of test strategy and overall testability, and thus provide valuable feedback to board design and layout engineers.

Managing ECOs

The open-platform design of MPM tools makes them particularly suited to handling ECOs in an outsourcing environment. Manufacturers can adapt quickly to ECOs while reusing as much previous data as possible.

For example, the variant manager module of MPM software (Figure 3 ) can make it easy to use the same fixture for different versions of a board. For a minor revision of a board, the software can automatically define the changes that must be made to an existing test fixture and can provide new supporting documentation that indicates which nails are no longer needed.

To ensure product conformance, engineering changes and updates must be shared with all the tools used during the NPI and manufacturing processes. MPM systems offer an integrated process that ensures that data flow from an externally generated change is managed properly internally. For example, if a product's design changes, the repair system must be updated to provide correct defect and yield information to the quality and reporting systems. Such an update is important when manufacturing is done in-house, but it becomes essential in an outsourced environment.

Managing product manufacture

Many MPM tools include modules for both planning and execution, and these tools use the data created during the planning stage as a baseline for the product and process information used by the execution system's modules. This is true for a new product launch or for support of an ECO.

In an outsourced environment, you can use MPM tools to gain access to information from the execution system so you can report the product status and ensure both product traceability and regulatory compliance. Validating that the "as built" product conforms to customer or government specifications is a function of the test and inspection processes. In-circuit testers, functional testers, flying probers, and x-ray and automatic optical inspection (AOI) equipment can be linked to the execution modules of an MPM tool, which can produce real-time reports about statistical process control (SPC), trend analysis, and yield.

When a product can pass all test and inspection verification points, MPM software can create and retain the "as built" configuration of the product, enabling complete validation of the product's process history, component traceability, and product genealogy. In an outsourced environment, these records help provide proof for regulatory compliance and provide a record that the agreed-upon manufacturing processes were followed.

The dashboard-like performance-management tools in MPM software—coupled with Web-based reporting portals—and high-level, user-friendly online analytical processing (OLAP) tools further enhance communication. (See "Dashboards and OLAP" in the online version of this article.) Connecting all members of the manufacturing chain into one virtual enterprise, MPM helps manufacturers build production strategies that support a chosen business strategy.

For more information

Robinson, Keith, "What Is MPM Software?" Surface Mount Technology , November 2002. p. 1. www.smt.pennnet.com .

For more information about manufacturing test topics, visit www.tmworld.com/ate .

Matthew Wuensch is senior director of product marketing at Tecnomatix Unicam. E-mail: matt.wuensch@tecnomatix.com .