Hughes Aircraft Company is successfully using Mentor Graphics' Workflow Manager tools to deploy and follow common processes. A prevalent problem in companies today is how to deploy common processes and then have the discipline to follow them. Experts from across a company spend significant effort developing best- practice processes. Then when it comes to deploying these processes to the end users, failure occurs due to difficulty in accessing the process, general resistance of users, and similar issues. Hughes has proven that proper use of the Workflow Manager can overcome these problems.

The Hughes Team has made innovative additions to Mentor Graphics' Workflow tools. These include checklists that control step completion, a tool launch selector for multi-tool access, logbooks used for resetting and engineering notes, and many other features. These enhancements make the Workflow environment an all- encompassing method of presenting a common process to the user.

This presentation will discuss several common processes in the Workflow Manager that are successfully being used at Hughes: a high-level Integrated Product Team process and a detailed PWB CAD process. The PWB CAD process was the Hughes pilot project and has been used for over a year. Results and details of the flows will be shared. A workstation demo of the PWB CAD flow actually used at Hughes will highlight that flow and the Hughes enhancements to the Workflow Manager.

Bio:
Gil Alexander is a senior engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company. Gil has been a Mentor user for nine years and has spent the last several years in process development. Gil is an electronic engineering graduate of Liverpool University, England and has 29 years' experience in digital design.

Chris Withers is a senior staff engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company. Chris has twice won first place in the Mentor Graphics Technology Leadership Awards in the MCM category. He is a Cornell University engineering graduate and has 17 years' experience in PWB and MCM CAD.