Co-Design Trade-Offs: Balancing Robustness, Performance, and Cost

This chapter addresses the problem of balancing the ideal ESD robustness technical solutions available against the real-world constraints of cost and performance limitations. A conceptual three-way continuum ?>trade-off gamut?> is presented to help conceptualize the dynamic interplay between price (or cost), performance (or quality), and robustness (or susceptibility). Beyond the design community, this chapter also encourages manufacturing, marketing, and management to develop an appreciation of and understanding for the limitations and constraints of co-design by considering the end business opportunity costs of asking for too much of one specification, or not enough of another. This idea is then extended to the perspective of the end user experience, who holds the ultimate market-driven verdict on the product's success. Finally, the chapter considers the product co-design development cycle beyond a single product iteration to multiple product cycles and numerous application usage models.