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The electronics engineering landscape has experienced significant changes in the past half-decade, driven by technological advancements and global trends and disruptions. Significant limitations faced by electronics engineers and organizations include talent shortages, shortened product lifecycles, and a shift toward unpredictability in global trade and supply chains.
These macro-challenges impact the readiness and effectiveness of development teams in addressing complex electronic system requirements. To overcome these challenges, next-generation electronic design solutions must possess key components such as intuitiveness, artificial intelligence (AI) infusion, cloud connectivity, integration, and security.
By prioritizing usability, leveraging AI capabilities, embracing cloud connectivity, adopting an integrated approach, and ensuring robust security measures, engineers can navigate the dynamic landscape more effectively.
What modern electronics engineers want
In examining the evolution of electronic systems design and the role of electronic design automation (EDA) in meeting these needs, the focus has traditionally been on delivering design tools and solutions that address critical requirements such as increasing product complexity, cost management, and meeting tight schedules.
As design activities became more globalized in the 1990s, the need for automation and solutions to support geographically dispersed team collaboration and integrated verification became increasingly vital.
Over the past decade, there has been an expanded focus on managing the growing complexity of systems. This has necessitated support for multi-board development and collaboration across various engineering disciplines, with integration into product lifecycle management (PLM) systems for effective data management.
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Figure 1 The above image provides a sneak peek of the evolution of electronics system design solutions. Source: Siemens EDA
However, the current reality is that complexity is now outpacing the capacity of organizations to effectively meet the challenges posed by modern electronic systems. As readers of this article, you are already well-informed about the reasons behind the increasing complexity of electronic systems.
Factors such as the convergence of electronics and software-driven products, the need for higher processing speeds, advanced IC packaging devices, edge-connectivity, and higher density are all examples of contributing factors.
This article will focus on macro-challenges that significantly impact engineering and organizational capacity. These macro challenges extend beyond specific design complexities and address broader issues that affect an organization’s overall effectiveness in tackling modern electronic system design.
The big picture: Macro challenges
As engineers, we often prioritize technology challenges, but it is crucial to recognize that these challenges are intensified by the macro realities of the global environment we operate in. Nowadays, we are tasked with designing extraordinarily complex products with a limited number of engineers, while also ensuring that these products stand out in a competitive market.
Moreover, we must navigate an environment of growing unpredictability, where the assumptions of a globalized supply chain system are no longer dependable and are susceptible to volatility. Engineers and their organizations are expected to “build the plane while flying it.”
One of the major challenges facing electronics development teams is the critical impact of long-anticipated engineering talent shortages on organizational readiness to meet market demands. Projections indicate that at least one-third of all engineering roles will remain unfilled due to an insufficient talent pipeline throughout this decade.
As a result, today’s electronics engineers are shouldering additional responsibilities, ranging from layout to high-speed simulation. Industry executives frequently express concerns about recruitment and workforce retention, recognizing it as a high-priority issue. The ongoing talent shortages and intense competition for skilled professionals will continue to significantly affect an organization’s ability to maintain competitiveness.
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Figure 2 Workforce shortages will put acute stress on development organizations. Source: Boston Consulting Group
Another challenge arises from the fact that lifecycles of electronic products have significantly shortened. Factors such as innovation, connectivity, emerging economies, mass urbanization, and an abundance of consumer options are driving faster product replacement and upgrade cycles. In the past, consumers were content with maintaining their goods and services for several years. However, the landscape has shifted dramatically.
While trends in consumer markets are well known, it is important to acknowledge that this phenomenon is also present in the B2B space. A notable example is the rapid growth of the Internet constellation market, which did not exist just a decade ago. This market, along with other emerging services, has placed increased demands on electronics development teams.
To thrive in this dynamic environment, product differentiation has become essential. The ability to offer unique features and capabilities that set products apart from those of competitors is crucial for motivating the adoption of new products. Consequently, electronics development teams face even greater pressure to continually innovate and deliver products within tight timelines that are not only technologically advanced but also meet the market demand of the day.
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Figure 3 Electronics innovation is driving down the lifecycle availability of products. Source: Pew Research
The last major challenge having significant impact on product development that design engineers should address is the shift toward unpredictability in the global electronics ecosystem. Unpredictability is the new normal, and there is no end in sight, requiring resilience across organizations.
Since the late 1980s, and particularly in the 1990s, we witnessed the development of a globalized supply chain that facilitated a “design-anywhere, build-anywhere” system. This system heavily relied on global cooperation fostered through trade agreements. But trade conflicts have become prominent over time.
Additionally, governments are now making significant investments to develop domestic capabilities, such as the US Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Act, which aims to ensure a robust American-based design and manufacturing capacity for semiconductors.
Contributing to this scenario, increasing regulations for sustainability in many countries and regions mean that to remain compatible and competitive, development teams from “across the border” must contend with new and often onerous requirements. The recent pandemic further exposed critical vulnerabilities, as supply chain shortages exposed the weak links of globalized networks.
In recent years, organizations like Siemens have emphasized the importance of designing for resilience, particularly to ride out supply chain volatility. However, resilience extends beyond the supply chain and applies to all aspects of electronics development. Organizational resilience is the ability to adapt and thrive in the face of constant change. Given the current landscape of unpredictability, the need for strategic resilience has become even more critical.
To navigate this terrain successfully, development teams must prioritize strategic planning, flexibility, and the ability to quickly adapt to unforeseen circumstances. They need to anticipate potential disruptions and build resilience into their processes, systems, and partnerships.
Road signs to successful system design
To thrive in this volatile environment, today’s electronics engineers require a next-generation electronics system design solution. This solution has five components that are essential for delivering a next generation electronic system design solution.
Intuitive
In the past, engineers and their organizations operated with a focus on specialization, where each individual or team had a specific area of expertise. However, due to talent shortages, engineers are now taking on additional tasks and expanding their skillset.
The traditional approach to EDA tools prioritized delivering specialized tools for specific tasks, often minimizing user-friendliness. But times have changed, and there is now a growing demand for highly intuitive tools. To address these and other workforce changes, it’s critical to ensure that engineers can quickly become productive with minimal learning curves, especially for tasks they do infrequently.
The ability to achieve productivity quickly is crucial, and engineers require tools that allow them to execute operations effectively and work in an environment that is logical and easy to navigate. By prioritizing usability, these tools enable engineers to work more efficiently, work with greater confidence, and increase their satisfaction.
AI-infused
AI has emerged as a powerful tool that can bridge the gap between the complexity of engineering tasks, talent shortages, and the rapid acceleration of design complexity. Rather than replacing engineers, AI is designed to enhance their capabilities by enabling intelligent human-machine interaction, providing on-demand assistance through deep learning, and offering surrogate modeling for comprehensive simulation and analysis. Just as AI has become prevalent in our digital experiences, its integration into next-generation engineering solutions is crucial to empower and extend the capabilities of engineers.
The potential for AI applications in electronics system design is profound. AI can provide in-design assistance, predictive engineering capabilities, and the ability to perform space exploration analysis. It can also extract and utilize actionable data from component suppliers, facilitating more efficient decision-making.
By leveraging AI, engineers can streamline their workflows, gain valuable insights, and optimize their designs for improved performance and efficiency. The integration of AI into electronics system design holds immense promise for advancing the field and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
Cloud-connected
In today’s electronics system landscape, collaboration across the value chain is essential. From component suppliers to design service providers and manufacturing contractors, purposeful collaboration is crucial for maximizing development opportunities, staying synchronized, reacting to supply chain changes, and evaluating alternatives.
Cloud connectivity offers a wide range of potential services that can benefit electronics system design collaboration and more. These include manufacturing analysis, circuit exploration, component research, and scaling services, such as high-end simulation, which require powerful compute resources.
The ability to access services and resources in the cloud fosters agility, enabling engineers to rapidly adapt to changing requirements and leverage specialized expertise as needed. It also facilitates seamless collaboration, as multiple stakeholders can work on the same project simultaneously, regardless of their physical location.
Integrated
An integrated and multidisciplinary approach is essential for maximizing efficiency and productivity. This approach eliminates silos and fosters collaboration throughout the development process.
At the core of digital transformation initiatives lies the concept of digital threads, which, by definition, embody integration. These threads enable the seamless flow of data and information across various stages of processes, systems, and organizations. Examples of these threads include architectural, component lifecycle, electromechanical, verification, and manufacturing data.
By collecting, integrating, and managing data across various stages of a product’s lifecycle, digital threads provide a comprehensive view of the product. This, in turn, enables informed decision-making, fosters collaboration, and optimizes designs.
To enable this integration, a next-generation solution must include an electronics design data management environment that supports critical domain-specific data. This environment should seamlessly integrate with PLM systems for requirements management, digital mock-ups, configuration management, change management, and bill of materials management.
By embracing this integrated and multi-disciplinary approach, organizations can leverage digital threads to enhance their electronic systems design processes and be better positioned to meet their digital transformation goals.
Secure
Security is a critical concern across the electronics industry, with a focus on adhering to government regulations and protecting organizational IP from cybersecurity risks. As design activity becomes more connected in the cloud, controlling access to data in specific locations and at specific times becomes increasingly vital.
A next-generation electronics system design solution must prioritize security as a core principle. This includes implementing safeguards for IP protection and enforcing data-access restrictions. Additionally, it’s important to ensure that cloud service providers adhere to the strictest security protocols when you partner with them.
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Figure 4 The next-generation system design solutions must prioritize core principles such as AI, cloud, and security. Source: Siemens EDA
Toward a brighter future
The challenges faced by electronics engineers and organizations today are significantly different from what they were just a few years ago. Recognizing this changing global landscape, Siemens understands that our customers’ challenges have accelerated since the beginning of this decade.
Therefore, we have undertaken the development of a next-generation electronics system design solution that not only addresses current needs but also anticipates future challenges. Set to launch in the second half of 2024, this solution has been developed following extensive customer testing and validation.
Our aim is to empower engineers, optimize workflows, foster collaboration, and enhance overall product development efficiency while increasing user satisfaction.
AJ Incorvaia is senior VP of electronic board systems at Siemens Digital Industries Software.
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