Design for Excellence (DFx) Services

BreconRidge offers a full suite of DFx services in support of the design-engineering process and ongoing volume production requirements.

Design for Testing (DFT)
BreconRidge Test Engineering provides detailed Design for Testability (DFT) studies for products during the initial design stage, and throughout the product development cycle. The resulting DFT report provides Design Engineers with a list of recommended changes to optimize the design for test in manufacturing. Four types of reviews can be performed – ICT Schematic DFT Review, ICT CAD DFT Review, PC Boundary Scan DFT Review, and Functional Test DFT Review. In all cases, a comprehensive DFT Report is generated which details the recommended design change, impact of the issue, the area of improvement, and a reference to the section of the DFT Guidelines document that applies.

Design For Manufacturability (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA)
BreconRidge utilizes in-house proprietary DFM guidelines for physical designs and mechanical assemblies including: board layout preferences, recommended land and circuit patterns, component selection and footprints, preferred card edge clearances, optimal panelization, parts installation, fiducial guidelines, fasteners and interconnections, etc. DFA guidelines include parts commonality and handling, ease of fabrication and assembly, fastening techniques and effective attachment methods for electronic and optical assemblies.

Design For Photonics (DFP)
DFP guidelines include recommended fiber optic cable and connector types, passive discrete and integrated optical components (VOAs, AWGs, OADMs, etc.), active optical and optoelectronic components (sources, detectors, transceivers, etc.), definitions of optical parameters based on international standards, recommended optical assembly processes and characterization methods.

Design For Reliability (DFR)
DFR guidelines involve outlining the reliability design process including Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), FIT rate analysis, MTBF and field return calculations, methodologies for Highly Accelerated Life Test (HALT) and Highly Accelerated Stress Screen (HASS), reliability considerations for electronic and optical devices, and guidelines for on-line Built-in Self Test (BIST) and its impact on fault coverage and system availability.

Design for Repairability, Maintainability and Serviceability (DFRMS)
DFRMS guidelines includ BIST applications for repair, partitioning and diagnostics levels, guidelines for disassembly, reclamation and recycling, typical field failure modes and recommended test tools and processes for repair, maintainability modeling and serviceability guidelines.