Cambridge based Nujira provides Envelope Tracking (ET) technology and solutions for powering energy efficient 4G cellular terminals, base stations and digital broadcast transmitters. Its Coolteq solutions power energy efficient 4G cellular base stations and Digital TV transmitters; and, building on this success, the company is now applying the same energy efficient technology to smartphones and other portable wireless devices.
As CAD engineering manager, Richard Sharples is responsible for the company’s CAD database, component and parts library, and all EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools. His goal was to find a solution to help Nujira gain better control over their engineering data and processes.
The company was using a component management database that was initially sufficient for its needs, but as it grew it became inadequate to control information such as Engineering Change Orders (ECOs) and product documentation. For example, when checking an ECO, engineers would have to compare the previous Parts List with the new Parts List line by line in a spreadsheet or on paper. This process was open to error and often took up to a day complete, as they would always double check it for accuracy. In addition, Nujira had to address concerns associated with silos of information that were a consequence of their manual processes.
“Once a product is in production and a company commits to volume and money any mistake in a Bill of Material propagates throughout,” stated Sharples. “We had silos of information that were the result of people creating and saving documents locally and we continuously ran the risk of someone using outdated information.”
An error from sending the wrong data to a contract manufacturer could potentially cost tens of thousands of pounds, so the company needed a central location to manage and access engineering information in order to eliminate tedious searches for information on the network or losing information all together. Accuracy of the data was also critical.
The PLM solution
Nujira wanted a solution that would easily integrate with its existing Engineering Design Automation (EDA) tools from Mentor Graphics. So, its EDA product sales and support partner, Saros, introduced Omnify Software. Omnify Empower PLM could provide Nujira with a central location to manage and access product information, automate the ECO, BOM and document management processes, as well as integrate with their PCB design environment, Mentor Graphics Expedition PCB.
The Empower PLM solution was implemented within the Engineering department. Working very closely with Saros and the direct Omnify Software Application Engineer, Nujira converted its existing component database and all testing was complete, including the integration to Mentor Graphics Expedition PCB, within a month. The product was then rolled out to the Test Engineers.
Sharples commented: “Design engineers are now able to utilize the power of the database by selecting components directly from Empower PLM and placing them onto schematics.”
This creates a closed-loop, error-free process that eliminates the need for any manual editing where a BOM is then generated from the final schematic and loaded directly into Empower PLM. “Our previous process to import a Parts List from a schematic took well over an hour to complete (for every Parts List) and now it takes only a few minutes,” he added. “In addition, checking an ECO has been reduced from a full day to only a matter of seconds with Empower PLM’s redlining capability.”
The Empower PLM system provides Nujira with better change control, revision control, and documentation control. The company has smoother development through automated processes and centralized information.
“We now have very, very good control over our engineering data. With Empower PLM, engineers can go to a central location to access accurate and up to date information and it gives us the confidence that latest documents, BOMs and changes are in fact the most current versions,” added Sharples.
