Reorganizations and mergers are forcing many companies to trim their library support organizations—a trend that's making it more difficult for designers to efficiently find the right parts for their designs. And at the same time that resources are shrinking and schedules are tightening, EDA (electronic design automation) parts are increasing in number and pin counts. Thus, library support organizations are faced with the arduous task of combining information from different libraries, created to different specifications and on different tool sets. Here's how companies can overcome these challenges and build an effective library management system to expedite the search process:

First of all, companies should establish their business and design goals. Keep in mind that it makes little sense to implement a system that accelerates time-to-market if low cost is the main thing that sets the company apart. Moreover, once companies have identified their design goals, they can more easily decide what characteristics—cost, lead time, color, etc.—are necessary for engineers to select components and can place these characteristics on designers' desktops when they pick components.

The next step is setting and documenting the standards to which the data must be built. Keeping a record of the goals and standards for an enterprise library is called library specification. If multiple standards are called for based on the business unit, geographic location, product line, etc. then the infrastructure should be able to support this. Remember that the infrastructure can differ significantly depending upon many requirements such as customer environment and performance. While large multi-national companies generally seek big, powerful and flexible infrastructures, smaller companies usually need lower-maintenance, more affordable infrastructures.

Companies must also make sure that library processes are effective. Such processes include part research/select, part request, part creation, part release and part obsolescence. A poor part research process, for example, will force designers to devote time they could have spent designing to looking for data instead. In fact, studies indicate that the search for components and component-related information can consume up to 30% of designers' time. Additionally, companies must implement an effective part creation process to make sure that each part inputted into the library is sound. Meanwhile, an efficient part obsolescence process is needed to prevent the released library from becoming too cumbersome. A method must be in place to not only remove obsolete data, but also to allow for an acceptable replacement and for obsolete parts to be used in legacy designs.

Finally, companies must take a close look at the technology driving the library—including data management, database access layer, application programming interface (API) and automated part creation. For example, data management technology handles data files through such capabilities as file distribution and synchronization. Meanwhile, the database access layer allows tools to interact with data contained in the parametric database in a standardized way. The API, on the other hand, provides data access through a single method as well as offers several value-added functions. As for automated part creation, this technology is addressing the current trend of increasing part complexities and pin counts by substantially boosting productivity and consolidating multiple tool vendor formats and manufacturing standards.

Source:

Finding the Right Parts – Fast
Mark Heidorn
Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture, December 2003
www.pcdandm.com/pcdmag/mag/0312/12heidorn.pdf