Valor NPI – The Siemens Solution for managing PCB DFM Rules

Design for Manufacturing or DFM (also sometimes known as "Design for Manufacturability") is the general engineering practice of designing products in such a way that they are easy to manufacture. 

In electronics, DFM is about organizing the topology of the PCB layout in a way that mitigates problems that might occur during the manufacturing and assembly processes of an electronic system. DFM activity is sometimes split into its two components: Design for Fabrication (DFF) and Design for Assembly (DFA), for fabrication and assembly of PCB respectively.

Why DFM is so important?

As the complexity of PCB Designs and demand for faster time to market increases, the importance of identifying critical issues earlier in development is paramount. Many companies have incorporated Design for Manufacturing (DFM) solutions into their release process, but the vast majority of them only use DFM as a post-layout process.

That’s too late. By the time a design gets to DFM as post-layout, the project is likely under pressure to meet schedule, if it’s not already behind. So any opportunities to improve, or optimize the design, for manufacturing get dismissed or deferred to the next revision spin.

Best-in-class companies have moved DFM design analysis from post design into PCB Layout to empower Engineering with visibility to improve the design “upstream” in development.

How Siemens and Cadlog can help you

Each manufacturing process employed by your manufacturing partners has their own process capabilities requiring their own set of DFM rules. Valor NPI is the only DFM system that captures the technology inherent in the PCB design and the Valor Parts Library and associates it with appropriate manufacturing processes to automatically select which DFM rules and values to apply. The result is an intelligent and automated analysis that provides an extremely efficient and effective DFM process.