Unified systems design and the electronic toothbrush
The task seemed simple enough: “Go get an new toothbrush for my daughter”. The pharmacy had a couple of rows of the traditional ones, but being an engineer my eye was immediately drawn to the myriad electric models proudly on display. These marvels of technology seem to have come to dominate the dental hygiene shelves these days, and the choice was impressive.
There were models with ‘intelligent’ charging circuitry to keep the batteries in tip top condition, ones with ‘programmable speed profiles’, and models with LCD displays that could display your entire tooth brushing history for the past month, downloadable via mini USB to your computer for, I presume, scientific analysis by dental professionals (or more likely parental scrutiny). There was even one model with a UV laser diode embedded in the head to “sterilize your mouth as you brush”.
Putting the usefulness or otherwise of these oral ‘innovations’ aside, the thing that really drives home is how pervasive electronics now is in our lives and the products we interact with. From toothbrushes to toasters and toys to tractors, electronic subsystems now play a dominant role in defining the function and value of the products we buy.
While electronics has been gradually encroaching on new areas of our lives, the last decade, coincident with the prevalence of the internet, has seen an exponential growth in the complexity of the electronic circuitry that we come into contact with every day.
One of the consequences of this rapid change is that many company production, stock, asset tracking and process control management systems are having trouble keeping up with the increasing prevalence of electronics systems in the products they produce. Indeed some companies that a decade ago would have had no involvement in electronics, are now finding electronics production dominating their worlds. And this is putting enormous stress on product management system that were never designed to cope with the complexity that electronics introduces.
Opposite ends of the design management scale
For instance, many companies have made significant investments in large-scale Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, seeking to create a single view of the complete design process (mechanical hardware, electronics hardware, and services) of a product.
However, most PLM software systems have been developed by vendors with roots in mechanical CAD and 3D modelling software, and targeted at the physical composition of products. The challenge these solutions face is the "very small scale" and greater complexity of electronic designs compared with the rest of the product into which these electronics are embedded.
The systems are simply not designed to efficiently handle the number of components and parameters typical of an electronic system, not to mention the programmable elements embedded within the physical hardware.
Not surprisingly, the general approach used is to model electronic systems as "black-box" entities within the bigger product. This approach can work when the electronics makes up a small and relatively simple part of the product.
But as electronics begins to dominate the product makeup, organizations struggle to manage the hundreds or thousands of parts that go into every electronics design, and increasingly the thousands or more lines of code that make these products intelligent, using systems designed to operate at a much more “macro” level.
Reconciling the micro with the macro
The situation in product development is analogous to the battle between Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics. One works well at macro level and the other describes things nicely at the micro level. But to really understand the entire universe, we need a unified theory that works across both worlds.
In product development our management systems cope with the components and processes that go into the physical design of the product, but stall at the “atomic” level of management necessary to create the electronic sub-systems it contains.
The approach often ends up being one of either "locking down" numerous aspects in the electronic design process to minimize risk and allow it to be managed at a macro level, or simply treating the electronics as black box and managing its development separate from the rest of the product. The first approach comes at the cost of stifling (or even killing) innovation in the area of the product that is emerging as the key domain for creating future differentiation.
The latter creates a disconnect between electronics design and the rest of the product development process that leads to longer than necessary design cycles and compromised product design.
Neither approach is viable in the longer term. Market forces are pushing towards ever shorter product life-cycles while customers demand new features and ever more ‘intelligent’ and connected products.
To meet these demands companies must rapidly come up with new ideas and designs, and streamline the product development process to bring these ideas to market in the shortest time frame. The big problem is the conflicting nature of the objectives - minimizing risk and production problems by carefully controlling components and design changes, versus encouraging design innovation to drive future product differentiation.
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