Automating part stack-up analysis

Product design engineers developing electronic control modules encounter numerous challenges managing engineering part changes when developing a new product geared to meet end customer requirements. Whether these changes are based upon customized designs, or designing from an existing platform-based product group, modifications to a small number of part dimensions and/or part datum can cause major effects and changes to the associated stacks, and ultimately result in many dimensional failures. The cascading effects of small part changes to as little as three or four dimensions can result in countless more cascading effects. Also, the stacks that may fail only a few stack buildups ultimately result in an unusable part mechanically. Engineers executing these changes in a manual nature can spend days or even weeks looking for stack failures before being able to officially approve drawing changes. By pushing all part information into a relational database and harnessing the power of even a basic computer server based system that centralizes all part and stack information, where various scenarios are thereby quick and easy to calculate. These scenarios can reduce the time-consuming manual analysis process from one or two weeks, to a couple of hours. Also, if your design team is not co- located (which is typical in this ever changing design team environment), the power of the server based system and database can be accessed from multiple geographical locations by utilizing a web- based user interface. By centrally managing the data and providing the same experience to teams located at different geographical locations, a large benefit is provided that will alleviate both performance and accessibility issues. Over the lifetime of the product, various engineering changes are driven by customers, suppliers, and internal design considerations. Design engineers need to analyze the impact of these changes before they move forward with implementation. Without the relevant Parts and Stack data in a relational database, analysis of such changes become tedious and time consuming, if not impossible within a reasonable time frame. When the parts and stacks are managed on hard copies, routine change requests will result in an engineer analyzing the impact for days before one can determine the proper course of action. The simple answer to these problems can be solved with the web-based relational database application. The web-based relational database manages the information and alleviates all of the previously mentioned issues. The process of analysis is data intensive and therefore very well suited to be done on a server based computer housing a relational database. By centralizing all of the information into one database, time is saved, communication is accelerated, more scenarios can be analyzed, and ultimately time to market can be accelerated.