Design for Manufacturing (DFM) refers to the process of designing a PCB with the manufacturing process in mind. DFM should be considered throughout the design flow in order to ensure a seamless design-to-manufacturing hand-off. However, in the past, poor quality data that does not address producibility or manufacturability has often been handed over to manufacturing, leading to problems and work stoppages. Roadblocks could include a wide spectrum of design or manufacturing issues, as well as competitive pressure on the fab shop to just accept the data and make their own internal changes, preventing teams from optimizing and continuously improving their designs.
To address these issues, best practices for design and manufacturing collaboration involve bidirectional data exchange, utilizing intelligent data formats such as ODB++ and IPC-2581. This allows for an optimized, integrated bidirectional collaboration that minimizes errors during data exchange and provides a continuous feedback loop of lessons learned back to design/engineering. Detailed stackup planning early in the initial design process enables users to optimize their stackup, perform pre-layout signal integrity simulations, and identify potential manufacturing issues before sending the design to the manufacturer.
Overall, a digital thread between design and manufacturing enables teams to minimize respins and eliminate undesired changes made to the design by manufacturing. By streamlining the transition to manufacturing and sharing a complete understanding of the product, potential manufacturing issues can be easily identified and addressed in the next revision.