Engineering Lifecycle Management: Requirements Traceability from Concept to Production

Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is a systematic approach that teams can adopt to manage the entire lifecycle of the products they are creating, from conceptualization to end-of-life. In the PCB industry, ELM encompasses a massive range of activities, including requirements gathering, design, manufacturing, testing, deployment, and maintenance.

Understanding Requirements Traceability in PCB Design

While all of the listed factors are important, requirements traceability is arguably one of the most critical aspects of ELM in the PCB industry. What exactly is the requirements traceability, then? It’s the process of establishing a clear and verifiable link between the initial requirements for a PCB and the design artifacts, manufacturing processes, and test cases that are used to create and validate the PCB to ensure that the final product meets the specified requirements without the need for any post-production fixes.

Benefits of Requirements Traceability

There are lots of benefits to implementing requirements traceability in PCB design, but the primaries include:

• the enhancement of the final product’s overall quality, courtesy of design and manufacturing processes that align with the original requirements;
• the identification and mitigation of potential risks early in the design process;
• the improvement of communication and collaboration through the provision of a common language for stakeholders involved in the process; and
• the streamlining of the design and manufacturing process helps teams develop a clear roadmap for development and testing.

Challenges of Requirements Traceability in PCB Design

That, however, is not to say that requirements traceability is without its challenges; companies in the PCB industry often find it challenging to implement effectively for a variety of reasons:

• PCBs often have intricate and complex designs with numerous components and interconnections, which makes it difficult to trace requirements to specific design elements.
• Requirements can change throughout the PCB design process, which makes it challenging to maintain traceability.
• Many companies, especially those with long-standing legacy systems in place, find it both difficult and time-consuming to integrate requirements traceability with existing PCB design tools.

To address these challenges, companies need to develop robust traceability frameworks, which should include a structured approach to capturing, managing, and tracking requirements throughout the PCB design process.

Establishing a Traceability Framework for PCB Design

The first step in establishing a traceability framework for PCB design is to identify all the key stakeholders involved throughout the process. This may include product managers and design, manufacturing, or test engineers and quality assurance teams.

Second, once stakeholders have been identified, companies must define the specific types of requirements that will be tracked. For example, interface, environmental, or functional and non-functional requirements.

Third, a traceability matrix can be used to track the relationships between requirements, design artifacts, manufacturing processes, and test cases. The matrix typically includes the following commons:

Once you have created the traceability matrix, it is important to capture and manage information throughout the design process, which can be done through a variety of methods, including:

• manually updating the traceability matrix as the design progresses;
• using specialized software tools to automate the capturing and management of traceability information; and
• using a version control system to track changes to design artifacts and requirements.

Requirements Traceability in Different PCB Design Phases

Concept Phase

In the concept phase, the initial requirements for the PCB are defined; they might be based on customer needs, market trends, or technical specs. It is important to capture these in the clearest and most concise way possible and in a consistent format that will be used throughout the design process.

Design Phase

During the design phase, the PCB is developed, including the schematic and layout. As the design progresses, it is essential to link each element to the corresponding requirements; this can be done using the traceability matrix mentioned above or other tracking methods.

Manufacturing Phase

In the manufacturing phase, the PCB is produced according to the design specifications. It is important to ensure that the manufacturing processes align with the requirements and that quality control measures are in place to verify the accuracy of the final product.

Testing Phase

The testing phase involves verifying that the PCB meets all of the specified requirements; there are a variety of tests for this, including functional, performance, and environmental. Traceability is absolutely pivotal in this phase, as it allows test engineers to ensure that all requirements have been adequately tested.

Deployment and Maintenance

Once the PCB has been deployed, it is important to continue tracking requirements and making updates as needed. This may involve addressing changes in customer needs, regulatory requirements, or technical specifications.

Tools and Technologies for Requirements Traceability in PCB Design

There are plenty of tools available to support requirements traceability. These can range from simple spreadsheets to sophisticated software suites, like Altium 365, that provide a wide range of capabilities to make the process easier.

Altium 365 Requirements & Systems Portal offers powerful features for requirements traceability that allow you to test, verify, and validate hardware product designs on a single digital platform with a unified data model, which can easily integrate with your PCB design workflow. Below is an overview of its key features and capabilities.

Key Features for Requirements Traceability

• Define, manage, and track requirements directly within Altium 365, ensuring clarity and consistency.
• Establish clear links between requirements, design objects (such as components and nets), and test cases, which enables efficient impact analysis and bidirectional verification.
• Track changes to requirements and design artifacts through version control, facilitating collaboration and ensuring traceability across project iterations.
• Leverage handy integrations with Altium Designer to streamline workflows and maintain accurate traceability.
• Generate comprehensive reports to visualize traceability, identify potential issues, and demonstrate compliance with industry standards.
• Trace each requirement from inception to completion to ensure that every design decision and test case aligns with the original specification.
• Access up-to-date project information and generate reports instantly to keep stakeholders informed and aligned through the self-updating documents and dashboards feature.
• Automatically verify designs against requirements to catch potential issues early and accelerate the design process throughout the project.
• Track changes to requirements and compare different iterations for the sake of transparency and accountability.

Benefits of Using Altium 365 for Requirements Traceability

• Enhanced visibility into requirements ensures that the final PCB design meets all specifications.
• Accelerated time-to-market through more efficient workflows and traceability reduces design iterations ahead of product launch.
• Centralized requirements management and version control facilitate collaboration among team members, which was previously less feasible with siloed departments and teams.
• Comprehensive traceability reports help demonstrate compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements.
• Centralized requirements management and links to design elements reduce errors and improve project efficiency.
• Automatically propagated requirement changes throughout the project save time and reduce the risk of human error.
• Quickly identification and resolution of design issues through continuous verification features speed up product development.

Best Practices for Effective Requirements Traceability in PCB Design

1. Establish clear processes and procedures

One of the most important steps in implementing effective requirements traceability is to establish clear processes and procedures for capturing, managing, and tracking requirements. These procedures should be documented and communicated to all stakeholders involved in the PCB design process.

2. Promote collaboration among stakeholders

Requirements traceability requires collaboration among all stakeholders involved in the PCB design process. This includes product managers, design engineers, manufacturing engineers, test engineers, and quality assurance engineers. By promoting collaboration, companies can ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals and that requirements are being captured and managed effectively.

3. Regularly review and update traceability information

Requirements and design artifacts can change throughout the PCB design process; with that in mind, it is important to regularly review and update traceability information to ensure that it remains accurate and up-to-date.

4. Use automation tools where possible

Automation tools can help ease the process of capturing and managing traceability information; automatable tasks such as linking requirements to design artifacts can help companies save time and mitigate the risk of errors in tasks where humans sometimes make mistakes.

5. Address challenges and lessons learned

Effective requirements traceability measures can be challenging to implement, so companies must identify and address challenges as they arise and learn from past experiences to improve future processes.

Conclusion

It’s clear that the importance of requirements traceability, a critical aspect of ELM, cannot be overstated; through the establishment of clear and verifiable links between requirements, design artifacts, production processes, and tests, its adoption helps companies to ensure that PCBs designed by their teams meet the original customer needs, with less chance of reiterations post-delivery and much better overall product quality.

If you would like to implement requirements traceability into your company’s PCB design process, make sure to adopt the listed best practices and integrate the appropriate tools into your system; also, remember to follow the guidance given to establish a solid traceability framework that will support the development of the highest quality PCBs.

Interested in following best practices? Track and trace each requirement throughout the entire project lifecycle with Altium 365 Requirements & Systems Portal!