WorkXpert™ Customer Success - Mitsubishi

Mentor Graphics and Mitsubishi Revolutionize the World of Workflow Management

This article first appeared in Mentor Graphics' Vision Magazine, June 1995.

WorkXpert™ reduces design cycle time by 30 percent.

Until now, managing the design process has required an all too elusive combination of experience, patience, intelligence, and ruthlessness. Managers must handle stressful delays, understand complex processes and tools, and still spur their team on to higher levels of design productivity. Against these odds, managers have performed admirably. Now, workflow management technology will help managers and design teams overcome process errors to achieve new levels of design productivity.

Mentor Graphics' new WorkXpert suite of workflow management tools -- FlowXpert™, XpertBuilder™, and ProjectXpert™ -- provides design teams with the ability to capture, manage and track the process of designing electronic components and systems. With FlowXpert, the designers in a team use a single consistent graphical view of the design flow. Team members can share information, and the status of different tasks in the design flow are available to everyone on the project. Furthermore, a company can capture design process expertise and establish discrete design flows for future use in the design of other products.

WorkXpert is a powerful new tool in both the designer's and the manager's arsenal against complexity. Another tool is the partnership between otherwise independent corporations. The development of WorkXpert is a case in point. In early 1993, Mentor Graphics and Mitsubishi Corporation realized they had similar concerns regarding workflow management. Mentor Graphics envisioned WorkXpert as an invaluable part of future EDA design methodologies. Mitsubishi wanted to improve process flows for its internal ASIC designs.

A multi-national corporation, Mitsubishi also wanted to improve the design kits it supplied third-party designers using the ASIC foundry services of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. By incorporating WorkXpert into these design kits, Mitsubishi Electric hoped to reduce design process errors and thus provide a strong differentiation with other ASIC vendors.

A Constructive Partnership

In setting up their partnership, the two companies first defined a list of key requirements they wanted in the product. For Mitsubishi, these included environmental independence, so that workflow management could be applied to any EDA tool suite (such as Mentor Graphics or Synopsys). Mitsubishi also wanted a single method of designing the flows for these design kits.

Mentor Graphics understood Mitsubishi's design requirements and had a few more critical requirements to add to the list. The design team at Mentor Graphics realized that product flexibility, ease of use, and a graphical view of the design flow would be crucial for the commercial success of workflow management in the EDA industry.

Development: Flow-to-Flow Management

Between June 1993 and September 1994, the Mentor Graphics team of software developers, quality engineers, technical writers, and customer support representatives worked alongside Mitsubishi engineers. The Mitsubishi team brought with them valuable insight into the real world demands and needs of designers and design managers.

As the project progressed, this insight led to an additional product within the WorkXpert family. ProjectXpert allows managers to track key project, task and data information regarding a project. In a single glance, managers can obtain real time status and tracking information from multiple levels of the design flow hierarchy. In addition, managers can analyze a project and compare its process and productivity with other projects.

The Mitsubishi/Mentor Graphics team delivered a prototype of WorkXpert in June of 1994. In September, final sign off was made on the product, signifying that it had met Mitsubishi's quality standards and was acceptable within their design flows.

Success In The Real World

So far, Mitsubishi has integrated WorkXpert into two different aspects of their ASIC design process. These are:

• The physical implementation of ASIC designs by Mitsubishi Electric
• The integration into their ASIC design kits, the ASIC Design Flow Builder.

By using WorkXpert in their own internal design flows (to manage data within the foundry's physical design process), Mitsubishi has greatly reduced its design cycle time.

"We have experienced a 30 percent reduction in design cycle time," said Makoto Morishita, CAD engineering manager for Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. "This is entirely due to the reduction in process errors that stems from effective flow management."

WorkXpert has also been incorporated into the ASIC Design Flow Builder. This product standardizes the creation of design flows and the encapsulation of tools. Mitsubishi can now quickly tailor each design kit with design process expertise that meets specific customer demands.

The new ASIC design kit has so far been used by Mitsubishi's internal divisions to help design ASICs and systems. Extensive internal use across Mitsubishi includes an engine control unit for the Mitsubishi Eclipse sports car, electronic bus controllers, DRAMs, the internal intelligence for various home appliances, and even an ASIC design for a pinball machine.

The partnership formed between Mitsubishi Electric and Mentor Graphics has proven to be invaluable for both companies. Mitsubishi has reduced both design cost and time-to-market. Moreover, the company is well on the way to completely eliminating design process errors. Mentor Graphics, on the other hand, has developed a commercial workflow management product for managing, tracking, and controlling design processes unrivaled in the industry.