WorkXpert™ Customer Success - Alcatel

Alcatel Telecom
Professional and Consumer Division
Mobile Phones Business Unit

Alcatel Telecom is a system integrator in the telecommunications field, with worldwide operations employing around 80,000 employees. Alcatel Telecom is currently working with partners in over 130 countries on projects that span the full spectrum of communications systems. It manufactures advanced digital switches, transmission systems, broadband products, access products, radio mobile communications systems, business systems, systems and products for space and defense. In 1996, these activities registered total sales of FF 71.1 billion (US $ 13.8 billion).

Environment

Tools

CAD Libraries: Based on Mentor Graphics LMS

Design Capture: Mentor Graphics DA_LMS™

PCB Design?: Mentor Graphics Board Station™

Mechanical Design: PTC

Platform

Main platform is Sun.

Plan to expand to PCs.

Designs

Mobile Phones.

Problems Faced By Alcatel

Overview

The Mobile Phones Business Unit of Alcatel had the task of migrating existing CAD users from their old environment to a new Mentor Graphics environment with as little disruption and additional training as possible. The Mobile Phones Business Unit was also looking for a way to make the CAD environment more productive for those engineers who only used the tools infrequently - and thus required more support than users who were constantly using the CAD environment.

The Mobile Phones Business Unit also had a need for a real concurrent board design process, since there were often several schematic designers and one or two PCB designers working concurrently on the same design.

Additional needs were to provide access to CAD data for manufacturing use (PCB validation) - preferably in a transparent way that minimized support from the CAD environment. And often these end users were not proficient on the CAD tools.

Earlier Design Processes Relied on Users Manually Transferring Files Back and Forth

The Mobile Phones Business Unit's CAD data was spread over different locations (6 in the worst case), which made synchronization difficult. Whenever one group needed a CAD file, the file had to be manually transferred. Although the CAD engineers currently involved in the project could manage this, it was nearly impossible for everyone else.	

Design data files were not synchronized, so an engineer had to manually check and make sure the design data was up-to-date. This made automatic hand-off of design files impossible. And non-CAD engineers required even more support, since they needed someone from the CAD department to transfer the correct files in addition to verifying that they were up-to-date.

The Mobile Phones Business Unit Then Centralized Design File Locations, but Usability Problems Remained

The result was one location for board design data, which marked The Mobile Phones Business Unit's first attempt at real data management for concurrent board design. Unfortunately actually using this process presented a challenge for The Mobile Phones Business Unit's designers, since they now had to understand the details of design data management (such as viewpoints, latching, synchronization and update mechanisms), which resulted in a new set of design data management problems. The Mobile Phones Business Unit still hadn't solved the design data management problem in a practical way.

WorkXpert Provided a Solution to the Usability Problem

Then the Mobile Phones Business Unit decided to use WorkXpert to manage the underlying complexity of design data management. The Mobile Phones Business Unit found that WorkXpert provided them with two immediate benefits:

  • The Mobile Phones Business Unit's design engineers now have an easy to understand interface to concurrent board design
  • The Mobile Phones Business Unit now has a workable design data management solution: custom software and the Mentor Graphics Concurrent Board Process solution provide data management, while WorkXpert provides task management through an intuitive user interface.

This is shown graphically in the diagram below. A loosely coupled set of design tools, dependent on manual file updating and transfer, has been encapsulated by WorkXpert into a much easier to use and maintain system, freeing the design engineers from tedious file management issues.

Illustration

Alcatel Design Process

Alcatel Design Process

Why Alcatel Chose WorkXpert

The Mobile Phones Business Unit needed a solution that would solve the following issues:

  • Avoid time loss due to communication problems.
  • Improve CAD data management.
  • Provide an audit-trail of the process steps taken.
  • Provide intuitive access to CAD tools for new or occasional designers.
  • Provide better access to up-to-date documentation.

Workflow Development and Implementation

The development of the Mobile Phones Business Unit's workflow involved two main phases. The first phase was focused on implementation of the concurrent design process between schematic and PCB designers. The aim was to improve CAD users' autonomy and see if The Mobile Phones Business Unit could use and re-use a workflow in an actual industrial context.

This first phase took 4 months of part-time effort by one CAD Application Engineer and is currently in production.

After the success of the first phase, The Mobile Phones Business Unit proceeded with the second phase: enhancing the workflow developed in the first phase. This second phase extended workflow functionality to include:

  • all the board design processes
  • automatic CAD document generation and transfer
  • easy access to on-line documentation.

Now all boards are designed using WorkXpert. The WorkXpert flows are supporting a total of five groups with thirty designers, with ten to fifteen designers working concurrently at any point in time.

Benefits

Design Data Management of the Concurrent Board Process

An efficient use of the concurrent Board process wouldn't have been possible without the introduction of WorkXpert. Using WorkXpert, The Mobile Phones Business Unit has been able to provide an easy to understand and use interface to their users with the added benefit of a dramatic decrease (about 50%) of CAD support required.

Task Automation

With WorkXpert, designers always know the location of their design data, and what point in the design process the project is in. This allowed The Mobile Phones Business Unit to automate many time-consuming actions (such as up-to-date data generation for design reviews, subcontractors, and manufacturing).

Manage Information and Coordinate User Tasks

Sending data to people involved in a project became easier to manage because WorkXpert gave The Mobile Phones Business Unit design team the ability to identify the project team members, their roles and when the data they need is available.

Easy access to online, up to date documentation, including application notes

The Mobile Phones Business Unit now finds it much easier to define what kind of documentation has to be written and how to associate it with each task of the workflow. For example, the designers can automatically fill out title blocks in designs, or associate icons in the flow with HTML or PDF documents.

Since designers can access those documents directly from FlowXpert The Mobile Phones Business Unit can now create a paper-less CAD documentation system that is easy to manage and update.

Custom software support improved

One point The Mobile Phones Business Unit hadn't thought about when initially evaluating WorkXpert was tool verification: since all design software is called from WorkXpert, The Mobile Phones Business Unit can now verify the design tools being used are the correct versions. WorkXpert verifies that the correct versions of the tools are being used as they are invoked.

Integration of new functionality has been improved as well. Indeed it is now easier to evaluate the impact of introducing new functionality in the process, since the process is well-defined.

Future Plans

1998 releases:

The Mobile Phones Business Unit plans to:

Extend the use of WorkXpert to some other domains such as mechanical design and simulation.

Use more of the project management and tracking capabilities (especially for project managers who are not the usual CAD users) of ProjectXpert, as well as use the user roles functionality.

Summary

Using WorkXpert, The Mobile Phones Business Unit gained control of their board design process and its complex design data management issues, with a 50% reduction in time spend on supporting this design process. The Mobile Phones Business Unit also found additional benefits by having their flow verify that designers were using the correct versions of design tools. Based on this cost-effective application of WorkXpert, The Mobile Phones Business Unit intends to expand deployment of WorkXpert into additional areas of simulation and mechanical engineering, and also intends to use process metrics captured by WorkXpert as a basis for continuing process improvement.