Automating Printed Wiring Assembly (PWA) Producibility Analysis

Gregory L. Smith Job Title: Associate Technical Fellow
Boeing Information, Space & Defense Group

253-773-5947

Automating Printed Wiring Assembly (PWA) Producibility Analysis The producibility of a Printed Wiring Assembly (PWA) design determines its cost and flow time for assembly and manufacture. PWA producibility is tied directly to how well the capabilities and practices of a particular assembly line and manufacturing facility can support the requirements of the PWA design itself. Current practices at Boeing provide for the definition of manufacturing constraints and producibility guidelines in producibility documents. Where feasible, the contents of these documents are encoded into the CAD system for developing PWA designs. At Boeing, the Mentor Graphics PWA design system is the primary system used for PWA development. As designers access the Mentor system to develop PWA designs, producibility conditions are taken into account. Due to a lack of accessible data and other considerations, not all constraints can be encoded into the Mentor design system. This lack of encoded constraints, as well as other concerns, requires a manual producibility review process to verify that producibility guidelines have not been violated for a given PWA design. The amount of flow time required and the consistent application of the producibility guidelines to the PWA design beg for the automation of this producibility review process. It is estimated that by augmenting the existing producibility reviews with an automated producibility analysis application a 10 to 20% cost reduction can be realized. This estimate is based on resolving and avoiding problems before the PWA is manufactured. This paper details the current Boeing producibility analysis process, the results of a producibility analysis pilot (the first effort to automate the process) and a vision for producibility analysis in the future. The paper concludes with a discussion of challenges to the current system and required enhancements to move the pilot system forward to fulfill our vision of automated PWA producibility analysis. Length: 20 minutes

Bio:
Gregory L. Smith is an Associate Technical Fellow with Boeing Information, Space & Defense Systems in Seattle, Washington. For the past 20 years he has been developing software tools for engineers in the Electronics Design Automation arena. He is presently the software director and architect for the NIST sponsored Pre-Competitive Advanced Manufacturing Processes (PreAmp) program and the DARPA sponsored Team Integrated Electronic Response (TIGER) program. Greg has received numerous awards and commendations for his work including; the ComputerWorld Object Application Award for "Best use of Object Technology in an Enterprise Environment" (1994, 1995. 1997), the Bryan K. Martin Technical Excellence Award (1994), and the Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Award (1990). Greg holds Degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a supporting member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the Electronics Advisory Committee for Seattle Community Colleges and the Northwest Artificial Intelligence Forum.