PCB Does Matter

PCB Does Matter

Over the course of the coming months I will blog from time to time on the importance of PCB in product development.

There is an odd paradox in electronics development, and in PCB in particular. PCB development is a highly specialized field, both in terms of engineering  and design knowledge, and unless you are on the “inside” you might not appreciate the effort it takes in getting a board out the door.

I believe that PCB engineers and designers do not always get the organizational recognition that they deserve.  I think this might be because the language of PCB development is very much an “insiders” language. To the untrained eye, the PCB is a green board with nets, traces, and components. It’s not a sleek geometrical design. Therefore, in many product organizations, PCB itself is almost a functional “part number” in an overall product bill of materials.

So, over the course of the coming months I will spend time in writing about the relevance of PCB in product development and overall organizational innovation.  Just by judging the expertise in terms of PhD’s and specialization, PCB development success is highly critical to overall product development success and can play a part in project profitability.

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You may have noticed that we have spent time with our customers in capturing their challenges, paths to solution, and success on video.  You can check these out on mentor.com under our multimedia section. Obviously we want to use these testimonials to advocate for Mentor’s solutions for PCB development. But I think there is a more important story here. It’s a story about complexity, discovery, and path to solution.

One of the more recent videos tells the story of Fujitsu from multiple organizational angles. From the user/designer level, its about functionality and from management its about key business drivers like time to market, compliance, and product differentiation. The big message that I think is derived from the Fujitsu video is that it’s not just the applications, but possibly more important, it’s the integration and the ability to manage data within a singular environment that drives project success.

So - stay tuned to this blog column. Over the course of the coming months I will examine the paradox more and more and why PCB is very much at the root of product enablement and needs to have more organizational visibility than it currently receives today.

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