The PLM Debate
As part of our ongoing research programme, Cambashi is running a debate on product lifecycle management (PLM) and how it interfaces with the supply chain. Various IT vendors were invited to respond to a discussion paper : "In 2004, will PLM and SCM still be recognisable TLAs?" (a version of which was first published in the FT)

MatrixOne opinion

PLM for EDA - A New Class of Tools Emerges to Manage Multifaceted System Design

Brad Hafer, VP of Marketing and Business Development for Global Electronics

Business pressures on semiconductor companies are relentless. Global competition continues to drive down the cost of electronic products and force semiconductor manufacturers to lower their prices. Greater economy and higher quality are a competitive necessity. Shorter product lifecycles push turnaround times to the limit. Meanwhile, Moore's Law marches on. Circuit densities are ten times what they were just three years ago. Furthermore, a growing number of designs have moved to highly complex architectures like nanometer-scale systems-on-a-chip (SOCs) and hybrid chips with analog, digital, and software blocks.

Just designing these ICs is tough enough. Changes are frequent and must be reflected in every part of the design, often across teams of hundreds of engineers scattered around the world and working for different companies. Communication typically occurs through e-mail, phone, fax, spreadsheets, lists, and ad hoc meetings-inevitably leading to problems in version control, data correlation, and design bugs. With complex chips, the cost of a mistake-especially one late in the design cycle-could be catastrophic. A design flaw undetected until tape-out could mean scrapping a mask worth $500,000, delaying a new product launch by months, and dashing plans to be first to market.

The focus of the entire EDA industry has been to provide a multitude of design tools to close the productivity gap. Semiconductor companies have long sought these tools as the primary vehicle for time-to-market acceleration - "If I could just cut a few hours off of my simulation run or speed up my timing closure." However, the task of managing disparate design teams, keeping track of huge amounts of rapidly changing design data, and collaborating with a host of disaggregated design chain partners can be just as overwhelming. Here, design engineers and the entire organisation behind them require a different set of tools to overcome these challenges and get their product to market.

Enter the class of enterprise software known as PLM, or Product Lifecycle Management.

PLM: Transforming Innovation

PLM has its roots in mechanical design, where engineers needed to keep track of design files generated by their product design systems. Basic product data management (PDM) capabilities allowed them to store files, control revision levels, and immediately see relationships between parts and assemblies.

The Internet and other technologies emerged in the 90's, providing new capabilities that eased the process of team collaboration. PLM solutions took advantage of new Web-based technologies and rapidly developed as an enterprise platform that enabled collaboration throughout every stage of the product lifecycle-from design through testing, quality assurance, production, and after-sales support.
As PLM matured, capabilities expanded to include workflow, program management and project control - features that standardise, automate, and speed up operations. The scope of information being shared also expanded to include not only CAD files but also analysis results, test specifications, quality standards, engineering requirements, change orders, bill of materials listings (BOMs), requests for quote (RFQs), manufacturing procedures and so forth.

Today's PLM solutions enable companies to manage all of the information about their products; from initial concept through to production within a single information environment-a PLM environment-that ties together all product-related information and processes across a company's value chain of customers, employees, partners and suppliers.

A Competitive Necessity

Across the industrial landscape, PLM is being recognised increasingly in boardrooms as a must-have enterprise application-and has emerged as what a growing number of companies regard as a competitive necessity.

PLM is being implemented across a wide range of industries including automotive, aerospace, industrial equipment, consumer products, and electronics. In fact, a growing number of electronic OEMs are already implementing PLM. Of particular interest is the ability to manage design projects and data across mechanical, PCB, IC and software teams. Toshiba, for example, has developed a single, secure environment that enables cross-functional teams to work more effectively across departmental and corporate boundaries for shortening time-to-market and reducing product development costs, while meeting Six Sigma and ISO quality guidelines. With program management capabilities, the company is able to monitor project status and uncover bottlenecks in real time in addition to controlling tasks and deliverables simultaneously.

Solutions for Semiconductors

PLM offerings for semiconductor companies have been architected around managing the most critical aspects of the chip development cycle, including design engineers, sales, marketing, manufacturing, management and finance. Inter-enterprise constituents such as design partners, IP vendors, foundries, assembly/test, and others (comprising the semiconductor value chain) have also been addressed. Overall, PLM solutions applied to the semiconductor space focus on aiding six key business processes:

Design Data Management is at the core of any PLM solution. Tools have specific capabilities for managing chip design information, the hierarchical relationship between various portions of the design, and all related design changes. With tight integrations to EDA tools such as Cadence and Synopsys, a design data management system enables engineers to track complex chip configurations, maintain stable subsets of all their files, and monitor and control all the various versions. All associated data on the chip design is maintained in these files, giving all engineers -regardless of geographical location - a unified view of the information so that everyone is working with the same versions of files and accurate up-to-date data.

Design Project Management helps facilitate chip development efforts in the design workgroup, including collaboration with IP vendors and design partners on specs, models, and IP blocks. This level of semiconductor PLM serves as the bridge connecting Design Data Management with Program Management to keep chip design activities on schedule and create better visibility into designs and their status. A manager's dashboard provides a quick summary of the progression of chips underway, what phase they are in and how they are executing to plan. Access to the detailed work breakdown structure is then a mouse click away.

Design-to-Manufacture Management solutions streamline the chip Bill-of Material (BOM) development process and subsequent hand-off of the GDSII tape-out to the foundry according to established semiconductor design rules and physical design kits from the foundry. This solution aids production engineers and operations personnel in organising, compiling and managing the BOM and BOM variants. Automated links directly to the chip design files ensure that changes in the development cycle are fully reflected in the tape-out.

Opportunity Management is targeted at the design-win or "engineer to order" process and managing on-going iterative design cycles with the customer. By allowing orders to be placed directly into their own system, semiconductor companies are able to submit proposals and quotes back to customers in a timely manner. Additionally, advanced pass-through RFQs can be generated to link many levels of the supply chain together in cascading RFQ and quotation response processes. PLM also provides the capability to efficiently identify, organise and document a chip's ever-changing requirements, while allocating appropriate features of the IC to meet these needs.

Product Line Planning helps at the marketing function to define key capabilities for engineer to order and/or engineer to market business models. The PLM solution supports capturing of market requirements, definition of features, product configuration management and product line performance metrics. The overall "engineer to market" process is addressed, enabling management of the entire product portfolio.

Concept-to-Volume solutions for new product introduction (NPI) are needed to manage the entire phase-gate product development process from inception to end-of-life. Program dashboards specifically geared toward IC development processes give management real-time visibility into a program's status in terms of process, costs/benefits-and ultimately enables better decision-making into which programs offer the highest potential return. This capability increases productivity of globally distributed users by managing programs with real-time information, updated automatically through direct links to Design Data Management and other PLM systems.

Substantial Business Benefits

Through these types of capabilities, PLM provides members of the semiconductor value chain a real-time view of a single, consistent source of product data: customer requirements, design data, program status, project history and engineering changes.

Operational efficiencies are improved with PLM because groups work faster through advanced information retrieval, electronic information sharing, data and design reuse, and numerous automatic capabilities. This enables companies to process engineering change orders faster, for example, work more effectively with suppliers and customers in handling bids and quotes, and exchange critical product data more smoothly with production facilities.

PLM also can result in significant savings through cost avoidance, a particularly important issue in the semiconductor industry where simple configuration errors at tape-out to the foundry have been found to account for 20-40% of IC production failures. At a minimum, this wastes a half million dollars per mask set and months of engineering time. More importantly, if the end product is a high-volume, short lifecycle consumer item such as a cell phone, disk drive or PC, the lost revenue from a missed market opportunity can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Through these efficiencies and the avoidance of costly errors, PLM can result in impressive savings-with many companies reporting pay-off periods of one to two years or less-based solely on reduced costs.

The broadest benefits of PLM can be achieved through greater performance at the extended enterprise level, involving information management, program management and collaboration across separate groups and companies throughout the semiconductor development chain.

PLM is about transforming the product innovation process. In the fiercely competitive semiconductor industry, where companies are constantly looking for ways to gain a competitive advantage, those who look beyond EDA productivity tools and start investigating enterprise PLM solutions will emerge as the dominant companies across the semiconductor industry in the decades to come.

If you have any feedback to add to this debate, please email plm@cambashi.com with the subject "PLM debate".