Desay SV reduces DFM and assembly issues and improves design efficiency
Desay SV is one of the largest automotive electronics enterprises in China. Desay SV’s core business focuses on the efficient integration of three major areas of advanced automotive electronics: smart cabin, smart drive, and smart service.
By shifting DFM analysis earlier in the design process, Xpedition DFM helped identify and resolve DFM issues early, significantly reducing the number of revisions due to DFM issues by 95%!"
Headquartered in Huizhou, China, with R&D branches and subsidiaries in Germany, Japan, Singapore, Spain, USA, and other countries, Desay SV is one of the largest automotive electronics enterprises in China. Desay SV’s core business focuses on the efficient integration of three major areas of advanced automotive electronics: smart cabin, smart drive, and smart service. Relying on 38 years of accumulated expertise, Desay SV has excelled in R&D, design, quality management, and intelligent manufacturing.
In the face of global economic challenges and intense competition, Desay SV remains committed to investing nearly 10% of annual revenue into R&D. This investment drives the continuous evolution of products and technologies, positioning Desay SV as a technology-leading enterprise. Leaning on leading-edge technology and a safe and reliable supply system, Desay SV has earned the long-term trust of global customers, including Geely, Li Auto, Toyota, Volkswagen, Volvo, and many other automotive manufacturers. Desay SV’s consistent innovation and market leadership have placed it on the Automotive News Top 100 Global Auto Parts Suppliers List for several years, securing the 74th position in the 2024 edition.
The goals of Desay SV’s R&D team are to continuously drive technological innovation, improve product quality and performance, and meet the needs of rapidly developing automotive electronics and intelligent driving systems.
This is largely in response to the explosion of electronics in an automotive market marked by rapid technological advancement, Intense product competition, and shifting international standards and regulations.
As automotive products become as intelligent as smartphones, development cycles have shortened significantly (22.17% shorter in 2023 compared to 2022), and product complexity has increased (49.8% higher in 2023 compared to 2022). Each revision consumes substantial human and material resources, and every additional revision significantly impacts both development time and costs.
The fast pace of automotive product iterations and updates leads to shorter design cycles and more frequent design revisions and requires the Desay SV R&D team to closely monitor the development trends of leading technologies and continually enhance their technical expertise.
Clearly, this highly competitive market necessitates continuous innovation and improvement of product performance and user experience to maintain competitiveness. While the varying standards and regulations on automotive electronics across different countries and regions challenges the R&D team to ensure that Desay SV’s products comply with the requirements of local markets.
Desay SV delivers efficient integration of smart cabin, smart drive, and smart service automotive technologies.
At the engineering level, these contextual challenges are heightened by several aspects of automotive electronics systems that impact the characteristics of the boards the Desay SV engineering team must create.
Functional diversity: Modern automobiles are equipped with a variety of electronic systems, such as in-vehicle display system, air-conditioner control system, in-vehicle entertainment system, and intelligent driving system. Each system requires corresponding PCBs for control and data processing.
High performance requirements: Automotive PCBs must attain high performance and stability, and they must be able to operate normally under harsh in-vehicle environmental conditions, such as high temperature, humidity, and vibration. This requires the use of high-quality materials and manufacturing processes.
Safety considerations: The design of automotive PCBs must prioritize safety, especially for the circuit boards related to critical vehicle systems, such as instrument display system and intelligent driving system, which must be stable and reliable to ensure the safe operation of automobiles.
Interconnection requirements: With modern automobiles becoming increasingly intelligent and interconnected with external systems, more communication interfaces and control functions are required, resulting in more complex connection and integration of circuit boards.
Several technological and physical factors only add to the rigors of automotive electronic system design, resulting in even more challenges for the R&D team.
The harsh environmental conditions automobiles face usually include high and low temperatures, high humidity, and persistent vibration – all of which poses challenges to PCB design. Designers need to select materials that are resistant to high temperature and vibration, and they must take effective measures to prevent moisture and dust from damaging electronic components.
Automotive electronic devices need to meet strict electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards to avoid electromagnetic interference (EMI) with other in-vehicle systems or wireless communications. Designers need to take special measures in PCB layout and routing – such as ground planning and routing of differential mode signals – to ensure overall EMI/EMC performance.
The reliability of automotive electronic systems is crucial, as any failure may lead to severe accidents. PCB designers must account for the thermal stability of components, the design of anti-lock screws, the reliability of connectors, and other factors to ensure the system remains stable and reliable under extreme conditions such as high pressure, high temperature, and high humidity.
The limited interior space of an automobile means that its electronic systems need to integrate numerous functions and components in a limited space. This necessitates maximizing the functionality of the PCBs. PCB designers need to pay close attention to the logic of the layout and the optimization of the routing to achieve the best performance within the allotted space.
Many of the electronic systems found in modern automobiles require high-speed data transmission. These include radar, camera, and communication systems. Therefore, PCB designers need to consider the integrity and anti-interference capabilities of high-speed signals, and adopt suitable techniques for line width, level design, impedance control, and more.
Xpedition DFM shifts the DFM validation left to resolve DFM issues early on.
As automotive products become more intelligent, the integration level of circuit boards has increased, leading to more complex designs. These complex circuit boards can have up to 16 layers, with board footprints that are larger than an A4 sheet of paper, high-speed signal frequencies of 10 GHz or above, and over 30,000 pins and traces on a single board. Hence, relying solely on traditional manual DFM analysis for each component across multiple layers is time-consuming and prone to errors.
With the need to improve the DFM review process for both the PCB design team’s internal checks and the manufacturing team’s external checks, Desay SV adopted the automated DFM process delivered by Xpedition DFM from Siemens.
The Desay SV team ran Xpedition DFM early and often, using it for DFM analysis at several stages of their design flow.
When using Xpedition DFM, the layout team imports the pre-set template rules and runs automated analysis within the Xpedition layout environment. The results are directly viewable in the Xpedition layout design rules checking (DRC) interface.
By running Xpedition DFM during the layout phase, layout-related DFM issues can be identified early, thereby allowing timely adjustments and optimizations. After routing is completed and before review, DFM analysis with Xpedition DFM can be performed to modify and optimize routing details. After review and optimization, running Valor NPI for final DFM analysis before sending the design for manufacturing provides a final confirmation of the design data.
“By shifting DFM analysis earlier in the design process, Xpedition DFM helped identify and resolve DFM issues early, significantly reducing the number of revisions due to DFM issues by 95%!”
According to Desay SV, Concurrent Valor NPI delivered two major benefits.
“Xpedition DFM allowed us to structure and integrate DFM rules from different departments into an automated process that unifies design management and validation. As a result, non-compliant DFM items could be clearly identified. Additionally, Xpedition DFM supported further product development, enabling us to incorporate most of our existing DFM rules into the automated checklist of Xpedition DFM, making non-compliant DFM items visible and actionable.”
“PCB engineers can perform DFM analysis during the PCB design phase, before the manufacturing team conducts their review. This early detection and rectification of issues significantly improves product development efficiency and shortens the R&D cycle.”
Valor Parts Library is used to model the placement of component leads on footprints to ensure quality solder joints.
Improve design quality: Automated analysis enables the timely identification and correction of potential issues and errors in PCB design, and it ensures compliance with manufacturing standards and requirements, thereby improving design quality.
Reduce production costs: Automated analysis helps avoid manufacturing difficulties or errors in designs and reduces the need for later corrections and rework, thus reducing production costs.
Reduce time for product launching: Automated analysis allows for the rapid identification and timely correction of design issues, which can speed up the development and production cycle of products, thus shortening the time to product launch.
Improve production efficiency: Automated analysis helps engineers quickly identify and solve design issues, thereby reducing the time spent on manual troubleshooting and verification and improving production efficiency.
Reduce human errors: Automated analysis identifies and fixes design errors during the design phase, thereby reducing the impact of human factors on product quality and improving product stability and reliability.
Enhance teamwork: Automated analysis allows team members to share design documents and analysis results, which facilitates better collaboration and communication, thereby improving teamwork efficiency and quality.
Improve customer satisfaction: Automated analysis can ensure that designs meet customer needs and standards, thereby improving product quality and reliability, as well as customer satisfaction.
Xpedition DFM also reduced the number of engineering queries or clarifications (i.e., the EQ DFM issue list) from PCB suppliers by 26%. And it significantly reduced the probability of manufacturing issues during trial production or NPI.
“After using Xpedition DFM, the average occurrence rate of assembly issues decreased from 0.84% to below 0.08%.”
The many benefits of the Xpedition DFM process motivated the original adopters to share the many advantages of this tool, recommending the Xpedition DFM process to both other Desay SV PCB design teams and its manufacturing teams.
“Automated PCB DFM analysis can bring many benefits to our projects and company, including improved design quality, reduced production costs, reduced time for product launching, improved production efficiency, reduced human errors, enhanced teamwork, and improved customer satisfaction. These advantages can help any company maintain competitiveness and achieve success in a highly competitive market.”
The Desay SV team focus is on delivering safe, comfortable, and efficient mobility solutions and services to the automotive market.
After using Xpedition DFM, the average occurrence rate of assembly issues decreased from 0.84% to below 0.08%."