Premier Demonstration - Overview

SCRA
Charleston, South Carolina
February 21, 1997

The DARPA-sponsored TIGER project (Team Integrated Electronic Response) demonstrates advanced engineering collaboration between primes and suppliers using standards-based design, analysis, and manufacturing tools. In the TIGER scenario (Fig. 1), a Prime releases early printed wiring assembly/board (PWA/B) design information to its Assembly Factory (1^st Tier Manufacturer) for design feedback. The Assembly Factory in turn assigns several of its PWB suppliers to the integrated product team (IPT) and sends them PWB design information in a standard STEP format, along with request for proposals (RFPs). One of these small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) uses the TIGER toolset via an Internet-based engineering service bureau to perform a variety of process-specific design checks, including design-for-manufacturability (DFM) and thermomechanical analysis. Suppliers feedback design improvement suggestions via a Negotiation Facility.

This TIGER scenario has been tested with Boeing and Holaday Circuits as a representative prime and supplier, respectively. Other team members are Arthur D. Little (ADL), the Atlanta Electronic Commerce Resource Center (AECRC), Georgia Tech, International TechneGroup Inc. (ITI), and South Carolina Research Authority (SCRA, the program lead).

On Feb. 21, 1997 the TIGER Team conducted the premier demonstration of the overall scenario depicted in (Fig. 1). Each IPT member was represented in the SCRA auditorium at Charleston SC: Prime designer; 1^st Tier manufacturing engineer and procurement assistant; and SME fabrication engineer and salesman. With each person physically located at separate workstations/PCs, design and business information was exchanged some 20 times during the hour long demo. From his PC, the fabrication engineer uploaded the live, Mentor Graphics-originated AP210 model to U-Engineer (the self-service analysis bureau physically located in Atlanta). He then performed warpage analysis iterations over the Internet, including automated Ansys model creation displayed in real time via X Windows.

The same scenario has also been performed by Boeing and Holaday personnel while physically located in Seattle WA, Irving TX, and Minnetonka MN, confirming that TIGER is truly "a STEP towards printed circuit design iterations in about an hour".

Premier Demo