COVER STORY
Design considerations for military systems and how to mitigate component supply issues
Military equipment is expected to have a service life of decades so designing new systems requires the use of state-of-the-art Integrated Circuit (IC) technology to really maximise system performance and capabilities, yet this work sits sometimes uncomfortably alongside efforts to support and maintain legacy systems that are up to 30 years old. These designs stretch back to the early days of the semiconductor industry when the aerospace and defence sector drove semiconductor demand and wielded considerable influence. The rapid pace of technological advance and commoditisation of ICs together with the associated semiconductor business models have not been easy to manage for the defence industry. Steve Munns, Aerospace & Defence Marketing, Linear Technology, now part of Analog Devices, Inc., talks about what lessons can be drawn from the design perspective to minimise future component supply issues
M Strategic supplier selection
uch has been written about the divergence of military and consumer product lifecycles where
a typical consumer product might only have a life of two years in contrast to defence, industrial, transport and energy markets that can be in excess of 30 years. The considerations given to individual aspects of product design and support also differ dramatically with military users placing utility and reliability over aesthetics and cost. From the design perspective, it is critical to engage with suppliers who have a business strategy and philosophy that will maintain support for their components over the entire lifecycle from design start to spares and support contracts. Whilst start up IC companies may have some attractive
products or technology that bring additional performance or integration benefits to the design this must be weighed against the risk of supply continuity problems. New entrants are vulnerable to acquisition or worse to business failure in the early years, leaving uncertainty as to how their products will be supported.
Protecting design resources Design resource is a valuable commodity and success of a product will be very strongly dependent on the quality of the design work; however the correct choice of components of course is about far more than selecting a good parametric fit. One of the most obvious ways that companies direct or steer their design
The Lifecycle Model
teams is by use of “Preferred Parts Lists” and/or “Approved Supplier” schemes. These attempts to strike the right balance between the freedom of design and the need to lock down every new item used in a complex pre-approval system. The risk is naturally that an over-constrained design process can lead to uncompetitive products that are late to market. It is critical that individuals responsible for managing component selection processes do not inadvertently act as a filter for ideas or concept discussions between designers and technology or product experts at suppliers. Selecting preferred suppliers is a matter of individual company strategy; the important factors will likely include the four critical elements from the Lifecycle Model pictured. From the design perspective, innovation encapsulates a number of ideas, including the competitiveness of the component or sub-system, the underlying technology roadmap and the willingness of the supplier to support the design–in
process. In fact, support is becoming a key factor as defence budgets continue to tighten and design teams are faced with less resources, shorter development timescales and increasing design complexity. To facilitate this Non-Disclosure Agreements are routinely used to permit suppliers to get in to much deeper levels of detail of sensitive applications. The defence industry and now other long lifecycle industries are becoming more aware of just how much design resource is consumed, sustaining old products where obsolete components have forced a design change. In acute cases, we have known customers expending up to 40 or 50 per cent of design resources on such activities, painfully aware that this valuable effort should be going on new product development.
Skills gap
Expanding the idea of design-in support, it has become evident in the areas of power
Figure 1: LTM8073, 60VIN, 3A Silent Switcher µModule Regulator in 9mm x 6.25mm BGA Package 8 July/August 2017 Components in Electronics
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