Original Date: 06/05/2006
Revision Date: / /

Rockwell Collins has developed and employed the Design for Manufacturing process based on rules defined by Rockwell Collins design guidelines. The implementation of this process has contributed to an increase in issue resolutions earlier in the design activities.

Rockwell Collins has developed and employed the Design for Manufacturing (DFM) process – a fact-based process founded on defined Rockwell Collins design guidelines. Rules have also been encoded in software applications, with robust geometric algorithms defined for shape and spacing violations. These predefined rules have contributed to an increase in issue resolutions earlier in the design activities. The DFM System is executed by all users, with printed circuit board designers running tools multiple times during detailed design activities.

The original process consisted primarily of visual inspection of assembly and fabrication drawings at the end of detailed design activity. This limited time for optimized manufacturability, created difficulty in detecting shape and spacing violations, and was limited to major defect detection. Results were variable subject to human interpretation of the DFM rules; interpretation of rules varied at different sites; and the lack of specific guidelines was time- consuming and limited the available time for producibility engineers to coordinate with design engineers and manufacturing engineers.

The new process employs an integrated design-for-manufacturing/design-for-test tool suite using ISO/IEC 10303- 210 as a neutral data-integration platform. The process uses the Rockwell Collins compute farm to offload compute- intensive processing from the user’s workstation. Results are fed into the Manufacturing Introductory Index – an enterprisewide management decision tool to determine which cost, schedule, and product performance results can be expected. The process also uses the single-source-of-information authoring approach (based on Enterprise Authoring Systems) to avoid errors due to redundancy and potential issues with lack of support (Figure 2-1).

The benefits of the new process include reduced costs required to identify shape and spacing violations; less design rework costs when “show stoppers” are discovered; less risk due to greater coverage from automation; less risk due to using a fact-based approach founded on actual manufacturing experience encoded in Rockwell Collins design guidelines; improved quality (i.e., defect reductions related to solder shorts, insufficient solder, and tombstoning); and improved delivery (i.e., less touch-up time and reduced work in process).

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