Integrated Design Tools for Consumer Products

To make U.S. products more competitive in the global market place, we need to define a rigorous Product Realization Process involving multiple design domains and multiple manufacturing domains. We assert that today, many products – especially the consumer electronics products that are the focus of our proposed work - involve “hybrid” design and manufacturing. Even the “traditional” automobile and aerospace industries require different designer-disciplines, working together. Furthermore, when a design is sent out for manufacturing, the fabrication processes involved are equally diverse and consequently carried out in different fabrication sites all over the world. In our work (in conjunction with Professor Shah at ASU) we are creating a normative design framework that enables all these diverse interests to be brought together. Secondly we are building specific design environments, DfM tools, and manufacturing “pipelines” for electro-mechanical products typical of the consumer electronics industry. Industrial collaborators from Intel and the BWRC have already embarked on this project with us and new students will work on expanding some specific Product Realization Tools and apply them to devices that will be in the market over the next few years. This project will have broad impact on the efficiency of the U.S. consumer electronics industry (including PCs, hand-helds, cell phones and games), which is estimated to be worth $80Billion in the U.S. alone. Consumer electronics design and manufacturing is also a major industry in the geographic locations of the two P.I.s. Thus, through our membership in organizations such as the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC), we have automatic collaborations - not only with Intel but with several other large electronics companies listed in the body of the proposal.

For Ph.D. work, there remain many intellectual challenges in the integration of design disciplines: 1) First, in each discipline, new manufacturing processes are emerging all the time and it is important to “update” designers so that they can – if appropriate - “tweak” emerging designs towards novel/better processes. One example is to educate designers towards choosing new processes that might be more environmentally benign than previously relied-on processes. Our Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) will be developed to respond to this need. 2) In parallel with these manufacturing process selection procedures, the designers in each discipline must help each other to “identify and flag” aspects of the emerging design that are coupled. An obvious example is the fit of a printed circuit board (PCB) and its various on/off switches, displays and buttons into an injection-molded casing. Our Domain Unified CAD Environment (DUCADE) will be developed to respond to this coupling-level need. 3) For the more detailed resolution of such couplings, an evaluation of performance based on preferences and options must be carried out. For example, one of our case studies on computer manufacturing has considered the heat generated by certain FPGA chips and the required cooling-fan design and position. In the ongoing research we will continue to develop a Design of Experiments Testbed (DOET) that can analyze these couplings, carry out sensitivity analyses, and provide optimal solutions. 4) Finally, once a design has been fixed, it is crucial to maintain the design integrity in the manufacturing “pipelines.” We will employ – and refine if needed - our existing CyberCut pipeline (from a previous NSF project) and also use the MOSIS system and local PCB assemblers to manufacture parts that demonstrate this hybrid integration.

for more information