DFX

Short product lifecycles and reduced price margins have imposed a major demand on the product development process to focus on cost reduction and design optimization. This would be the focal point of every engineering service company. At AT&S ECAD, every design is reviewed for manufacturability (DFM), assembly (DFA), and test (DFT) – generally termed DFX.

DFA aims to reduce the cost of assembly. It delivers improved quality and reliability. The PCB design is analyzed for any assembly problems early in the design process. This is a process for improving product design for easy and low-cost assembly .DFA is a set of guidelines and manufacturing data for designers to follow

DFM aims to ensure that the PCB design has been validated for all the manufacturing constraints of the design. Primarily validation is for stack build, worst case feature spacings, annular rings, slivers, solder mask, contiguous copper area’s, registration and aspects that have an impact on the yield in PCB manufacturing

DFT adds testability features to the design as a primary need for complex designs, so that they can be adapted to industry standard in circuit testers. Test coverage based on test jig structure is analyzed and test point position with optimization to achieve cost effective test fixtures is aimed as part of this analysis