Heerbrugg, Switzerland – May 16, 2011 – ESCATEC, the EMS innovator, is the first company to deploy the new version 3 of Mentor Graphics’ vPlan. The company will be sharing its experiences of the new software at a Mentor Graphics User Workshop in Munich on June 29, 2011. A key feature of vPlan it that it enables a new PCB design to be virtually assembled with components to check that everything fits appropriately and ESCATEC is now providing this as a service to customers called DFx (Designed For excellence).

“Investing in the latest technology and software is a vital part of our strategy of providing the best possible service for customers,” explained Gerhard Klauser, General Manager at ESCATEC Switzerland. “vPlan enables us to completely check the manufacturability of a PCBA and eliminates most errors in the design without the expense of having a trial run with actual boards. This can provide significant savings to customers and so we are also providing it as a DFx Analysis Service to any company wanting to verify their design prior to going to manufacture. This enables them to focus on their core IP secure in the knowledge that all aspects of manufacturability have been properly investigated and optimised for yield.”

DFx forms an integrated approach for Design for Manufacturability, for Test, for Toolability, for Cost and for Environment. It addresses all significant issues early in the design cycles to shorten the development time and time to market by reducing design loops, ensuring that the function of the design meets the specifications and preventing later quality and delivery issues.

vPlan uses data of the actual shapes and sizes of components from a database to simulate the assembly process. It checks the footprint and fit on the PCB so that any mismatch can be identified and the design corrected.  PCBs can then go straight into production using assembly programs generated by vPlan with a minimum of expensive trial runs to get the bugs out of a new product introduction.

Another important feature of the DFx Service is the BOM (Bill Of Materials) review which optimises the BOM and checks forward availability of components to prevent end of life or single source issues.

Further information on vPlan: http://www.mentor.com/pcb-manufacturing-assembly/products/vplan/ 

Further information on ESCATEC, one of Europe’s leading providers of design and manufacturing services: www.escatec.com    enquiries@escatec.com