Design Chain Associates, LLC (DCA) provides services that help Electronics OEMs and other product manufacturers increase engineering, procurement, and production efficiency, product and operational environmental performance, and corporate profitability by ensuring that the right decisions about supply base and the environment are made during the earliest stages of the product lifecycle, and are built-in to corporate strategies and tactics. Maximum supply chain robustness and optimized risk mitigation can only be achieved by applying appropriate focus, strategies, and business processes in the early stages of new product development, thus we are "Design Chain Associates", not "Supply Chain Associates". We provide services, as well, to other organizations with interests in this area.
DCA has three main areas of focus:
1. Management consulting to EOEMs: We help OEMs develop, deploy, and improve strategic business processes for supplier, component, and partner selection, management, and risk mitigation in new product development and throughout the product lifecycle. The purpose of these business processes is to define a "Safe Design Space" for supplier, partner, and component selection in new product development. We also help identify, select, and configure the tools that support these business processes. Example situations where we can help include: Product-targeted environmental regulation Compliance Strategy, Acquisition Integration Strategy and Business Process Integration, Supply Base Strategy, etc.
2. Technical (engineering) consulting to EOEMs, and Design and Electronic Manufacturing Service (EMS) Providers: We provide other, more tactical, Engineering and Procurement-related services such as corporate acquisition integration and "womb-to-tomb" Component Engineering support. Examples of acquisition integration services include part number normalization, supply base normalization and rationalization, business process assessment and recommendations, etc. Examples of Component Engineering services include developing and maintaining technology roadmaps; performing actual supplier and component selection, qualification, and management; helping determine supplier preference; dealing with PCNs and EOL notices; reverse engineering for design quality and BOM cost estimates; new supplier development; identifying alternate and second source components; and so on. Examples of RoHS compliance-related activities include material content acquisition and analysis, product redesign recommendations, identification of compliant alternative components, and so on.
3. Domain Expert consulting to software solution providers:We work with software suppliers whose products address the design chain and support one or more aspects of our Best Practice business processes. We provide product feature guidance, functionality roadmap guidance, 'black box' testing, use-case development, ROI factor analysis, and so on. We also provide implementation and business process assistance to the providers' OEM customers that enable them to more effectively benefit from the software's capabilities.
Compaq, DEC, and Tandem were three culturally very different companies in three very different markets (notwithstanding some overlap in the PC and notebook areas), although all produced general purpose computer systems of varying degrees of complexity and performance. When Compaq acquired Tandem then DEC, Mike Kirschner (Tandem's Component Engineering Manager) teamed up with Tom Valliere, then a senior Procurement Engineering manager at Compaq, and Ken Stanvick, an Engineering manager in DEC's Procurement organization. The team, led by Tom, was chartered to lead the business definition and development of world class methods and tools for defining and controlling the supply chain as early on in the product development process as possible, which could then be consistently applied across the entire corporation. Despite the differences and the lack of prior cross-fertilization in our respective organizations, we rapidly zeroed in on Best Practices for defining and controlling what is known as the “Electronic System Level (ESL) Design Chain”.
The 'Supply Chain' supports manufacturing of a product. It consists of the tools and entities that must be in alignment for a product to be correctly built and shipped. The image of a chain (and better yet, a chain-link spider web) represents it very well, since each step depends on the step before it: before a PC board with a semiconductor part on it can be assembled, the semiconductor part must be delivered to the assembler. Before it can be delivered it must be ordered. Before it can be ordered, it must be forecasted based on quantity required and lead time, and so on. Before the semiconductor part can be delivered, it must be built. Before it can be built the bare wafer supplier must provide the correct wafers, the chemical suppliers must provide the correct chemicals, the packaging facility must have the right raw materials and leadframes, and so on. Each part on the board, and each board in the system, has a sequence of events leading up to its assembly into a complete, functioning, saleable system.
The 'Design Chain', on the other hand, supports the design and development of a product. It can be viewed as a network of information, suppliers, tools, and methods that applies knowledge, capabilities, requirements, standards, datasheets, application notes, models, etc. to design and validate a new product which must be delivered in the right form, at the right time. The Design Chain presents End-Product Designs to the Supply Chain. Therefore, it Bounds the Supply Chain. So the image of a “chain” is somewhat inadequate — chain mail is somewhat better since requirements and timing between all partners, suppliers and their development teams, information and products, and the OEM's internal (or external) development team, timetable, and roadmap are critical.
How Does The Design Chain Work?
Regardless of how good a company's supply chain management tools and processes are, if the selected supply base is inadequate or incapable of producing quality product, production will fail. This is where Best Practice Design Chain business processes and tools help. By taking a disciplined approach to supplier selection and subsequent component selection, many potential supply chain problems can be averted or minimized.
Procedures which probe a supplier's capabilities, roadmaps, systems, and methodologies in light of an OEM's needs are paramount to minimizing aggravating, and sometimes debilitating, problems along the way to and after production release. This also applies to services: if a supplier is providing, for instance, Design Services, do they have the right experience, direction, tools, and methods, and what guidance should the OEM provide?
Moreover, just because a supplier is acceptable, is their product the right one to incorporate into a design? Here again, robust business processes for assessing the component's appropriateness for your product are required to ensure compatibility, risk mitigation (if required), the right lifecycle status, and quality against the OEM's needs.
Once a supplier and their components are approved for use in an OEM's product, they, as well as the product's structure itself, must be controlled and maintained. There are many systems available for performing functions related to this need. The core function for controlling parts and Bills-Of-Material (BOMs) is called Product Data Management, or PDM (there are various other acronyms that suppliers are applying to their tools to differentiate themselves or emphasize various differentiating features). PDM is a subset of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), which manages the product itself from concept through obsolescence. While PDM systems tend to do a good job of controlling BOMs via release criteria and Engineering Change Orders, they often have limited abilities to identify candidate suppliers and components or control individual components or suppliers. So a class of add-on systems termed “Component and Supplier Management” (CSM) systems has evolved. Since neither of these systems controls inventory or provides a platform for actual forecast or acquisition of parts, they may have to interface to Enterprise (or it's subset, Manufacturing) Requirements Planning, or ERP (MRP), systems. Other systems are being developed for interfacing these systems, which have typically been implemented and controlled by the Operations side of OEMs, to Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems, which have typically been implemented and controlled by the Development side of OEMs, as well as to the supply base itself.
The Design Chain is the lifeblood of development and requires a consistent, integrated, multi-disciplinary and multi-company team-based approach to be managed effectively and proactively.
DCA's breadth of experience ranges from support of extremely high volume consumer products to very low volume, high complexity, fault-tolerant mainframe computers. We can rapidly assess your situation and provide guidance, Best Practice procedures, training, and support tailored to your specific needs. Our experience spans the breadth of tools mentioned above as well so we can work with you to define the right configuration and functionality for your company. DCA's areas of expertise include:
Supplier Selection and Approval
Supplier Contract Negotiation
Component Selection and Approval
Component and Supplier Risk Assessment and Mitigation Tools
Environmental Compliance: RoHS, WEEE, etc.
Acquisition Integration
Classical Component Engineering (component and technology roadmapping, first and second sourcing, 8-D process manufacturing problem resolution, etc.)
Evaluation of tools to support these activities, including recommended configurations for part numbering, BOM structuring, etc.
ISO 9001 preparation and audit (internal and supplier)
Semiconductor Reliability
And much, much more.
Contact us to discuss your specific challenges.
