Cycle time estimation models for printed circuit board design

Competitive pressures force the electronics industry, like many other industries, to keep costs down and reduce the duration of the development cycle time for products. The pressures affect all the phases of product development and direct attention to new approaches for planning and control. The electronics industry is particularly sensitive to these issues because of rapid changes in technology. In the manufacture of printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA), the product goes through three stages of realization: design, resource planning and manufacturing. The estimation of the development cycle time is an important tool for the electronics industry bcause of the need for tight product introduction planning and the control thereof. Most of the past work in cycle time estimation tools is in the manufacturing phase. Similar analysis of the design phase cycle time is very important because the time taken in design and the decisions made in the phase significantly affect the later phases. The paper introduces a new approach to this problem called activation, which is used to build a cycle time estimation model for the design phase for PCBA. A small-scale case study using data obtained from electronics designers demonstrates the capability of the new method.