Target Condition: The Tale of Five CAD Monkeys

“But that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Many electronics engineering groups have a hierarchical structure, with senior-, mid-, and junior-level engineering personnel possessing various depths of subject matter expertise. The head of an engineering group is usually one who has risen through the ranks of the organization and has fought and won many project battles; they’ve survived and can pass on knowledge, wisdom, and guidance.

Every so often, though, an engineering group leader must call together their team, and tell an ancient story passed down from the “elders” to steer the group in the right direction.

I recall a gathering like this: Several PCB project stakeholders could not agree upon a way to move forward with a challenging PCB assembly which had suffered failures on the SMT line. Small, newly-specified chip capacitors were “tombstoning” and “skewing” on the PCB, and the root cause could have been attributed to many different variables.

The conference meeting room was packed, and the VP of engineering wisely started the meeting by giving each one an opportunity to share their experience regarding the assembly defects.

One by one, they methodically went around the room. The first one spoke up, “We’re using all our standard equipment, materials, and processes the same way our people always have; our manufacturing constraints have not changed for many moons.” Then he looked to the customer’s PCB design stakeholder, who pronounced: “Our DRC rules have remained set to the defaults of our people since the beginning of time.” This continued around the table as they pointed to charts and data to show how their workflows were never altered in ways that would cause component defects such as these.

After the stakeholder feedback was given—and just before they had a chance to begin pointing fingers at each other—the VP of engineering began to talk about a profound parable.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you about the ‘Five Monkeys Experiment,’” he said, and began weaving a version of the story specially adapted for his group. It went something like this:

Long, long ago (in the ’90s), five “CAD monkeys” were placed in a cage as part of an experiment. In the cage were  a bunch of bananas hanging by a string from the ceiling, as well as a spring-loaded test bed and a ladder, which needed to be precisely repositioned under the bananas to reach them.

The CAD monkeys had no use for the test bed at first. They knew intuitively that the ladder was the key to reaching the bananas. But each time a CAD monkey reset the ladder to climb toward the bananas, a crazy PCB cleaning process engineer sprayed all the CAD monkeys with icy de-ionized water. The CAD monkeys quickly formed some tribal knowledge about being sprayed down by the icy de-ionized water whenever attempting to reset the ladder. From then on, they agreed to inflict severe beatings on any who would dare go near the ladder.

Following their new tribal agreement, not a single CAD monkey went near the ladder. Instead, they spent all their time trying to figure out other creative ways to reach the bananas. Spontaneously, all five CAD monkeys tried reaching the bananas by bouncing higher and higher on the test bed. But you know what happens when five CAD monkeys jumped on a bed? Yep, one fell off and broke his head—a program manager then came along and substituted the injured CAD monkey in the cage with a new CAD monkey.

Intuitively, the first thing the new CAD monkey did was try to use the ladder to reach the bananas. After a training session involving several tail lashings from the already schooled CAD monkeys, the new CAD monkey learned the social norm. He was never taught “why” the other CAD monkeys wouldn’t let him use the ladder to reach the bananas because he had never been sprayed with icy de-ionized water. Nevertheless, he quickly learned that this behavior would not be tolerated by the other CAD monkeys. They continued trying to reach the banana without using the ladder. They even tried making a CAD monkey pyramid, but again, another monkey was injured.

One by one, each CAD monkey in the cage was injured trying to find a workaround for fear of using the ladder. Each time, the injured CAD monkey would be replaced by a new CAD monkey, who intuitively tried to climb the ladder, only to get beaten up. This happened a few more times until none of the original group remained.

By the end of the experiment, all five CAD monkeys in the cage had learned to never touch the ladder, though none knew the source of this strange reasoning. None of the remaining CAD monkeys knew about the icy de-ionized water abuse—the true root cause of their behavior modification (or tribal knowledge) in the first place. If they had, would they have called HR and recommended that the abusive test engineer be terminated? Once HR created a less toxic, experimental workplace, would the CAD monkeys have freely moved the ladder and reached the bananas?

If we could have asked the CAD monkeys for their rationale behind not letting their cage mates reset the ladder to reach the bananas, their answer might have been, “I was just following orders.” In other words, “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

The Moral of the Story
Whether you consider yourself a PCB engineering stakeholder, PCB designer, or even a CAD monkey, let us avoid assuming or creating unfounded conspiracy theories for workflow items in your company which may seem backward. Let’s get to the root cause of stakeholder’s problems and challenges. Let’s communicate and find ways to climb the ladder with the understanding to reach the goals. If icy water is about to be dumped on you, refuse to be subjected to it. Bust out of the cage and head for HR.

Our engineering managers must see that holding on to the old ways can be a two-edged sword. Values and character traits—both good and bad—exist in the past. A group can be easily wiped out by the competition unless it cultivates a culture which fosters continual exploration and experimentation with new processes, materials, and machinery.

This column originally appeared in the March 2023 issue of Design007 Magazine.

 

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2023

Target Condition: The Tale of Five CAD Monkeys

03-15-2023

Many electronics engineering groups have a hierarchical structure, with senior-, mid-, and junior-level engineering personnel possessing various depths of subject matter expertise. The head of an engineering group is usually one who has risen through the ranks of the organization and has fought and won many project battles; they’ve survived and can pass on knowledge, wisdom, and guidance.

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2022

Target Condition: Scaling PCB Design to the Power of 10

10-27-2022

I often reflect on the formative years of my PCB design career when a senior design engineer gave me some sound advice: “Kelly, never design anything that can’t be built.” I think of his words every time I begin laying out a board and while I’m reviewing and performing DFM audits on customer PCB designs which are being transitioned to volume production. The process of design shapes an idea into a readily producible, physical prototype which can be evaluated for functionality and performance. With regard to “build-ability,” these days, once a prototype materializes, we are challenged differently than when I began back designing boards in the 1980s.

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Target Condition: Practical Packaging Density in PCB Design

09-01-2022

Just as I tend to exhibit discomfort in oversized conference halls and meeting rooms, I self-diagnose as agoraphobic when it comes to entering PCB layouts full of wasted space. Mechanical constraints which utilize the printed circuit board substrate material as a mechanical or structural “filler” within an electronic product, under-utilizing the material for its intended purpose to support conductive circuitry, grate on me like nails on a chalkboard. I’ve seen an eight-inch, triangular shaped support bracket designed out of 0.093" thick FR-4 laminate material. It was contrived and specified by an uninformed mechanical engineering overachiever who proposed transforming the original sheet metal bracket into a “dual purpose” PCB solution in order to support the electronic engineer’s connector and associated circuitry. The circuit added to this clumsy “printed circuit bracket” monstrosity occupied just over a single square inch and seemed a ghastly waste of resources.

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Target Condition: Designing With the 5Ws and Other Acronyms

06-09-2022

Who, what, when, where, and why with? I’ve slowly become disillusioned over the past decade with the whole “design-for” schtick. Design for manufacturing or “DFM” has become extremely subjective. I must say I am even becoming hesitant to splatter the acronym “DFM” when referencing job descriptions or when considering a layout tool’s manufacturing analysis audit anymore because the term is so cliché. I know it shouldn’t be construed in such a way, but from my perspective, running a DFM check on a PCB design layout is inadequate unless the audit routine checks against the manufacturing constraint values of the volume supplier which in most cases it is not until it is too late.

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Target Condition: Happier in a Vacuum: The Design Narcissist

05-17-2022

Without a doubt, arrogant workplace attitudes have existed in this industry over the decades. Hopefully, as a profession, PCB designers are moving forward and accepting the fresh, positive signals from the many training leaders and trade organizations emphasizing the importance of stakeholder awareness. These visionary champions are conveying the message that we are better off when we look out for all our important industry stakeholders’ functions collectively, as we perform within our personal areas of expertise.

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Target Condition: Mandatory Masking Guidelines

05-05-2022

Solder mask is a fair topic to cover here as there are a few designer opinions which could use a little a little masking themselves, as they appear to be uninformed and can come across as downright dictatorial. After spending a few years now as a captive PCB designer working within the walls of PCB fabrication and assembly, I am qualified to say that it takes exhaustive communication efforts to work with our manufacturing stakeholders when a design does not allow for a manufacturer’s unique manufacturing process capability.

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Target Condition: Livin’ in a PCB Stakeholder’s Paradise

02-23-2022

A few months ago, I was offered a unique opportunity to serve as the AltiumLive Connect 2022 show host for the virtual event during the last full week of January. It started with an idea I had during a meeting with Altium last October to create a musical promo for the annual summit. I love to write songs and I’ve written a few which have been used commercially. But for a technical electronics trade show, I knew that would have to reach far outside my normal styles of composition.

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2021

Target Condition: ‘Dealing’ With PCB Design

12-07-2021

Welcome to Kelly Dack's new column, Target Condition, where he will be pursuing the need for stakeholder advocacy in the printed circuit board industry. He will be deliberating topics essential to helping all of us understand what each PCB project stakeholder needs in order to achieve 100% acceptability for their stake in a PCB design project. These requirements will be expressed using the same helpful, graphic target condition example methodology which is utilized in the IPC-A-600 & A-610 specifications. He said, "I’m looking forward to exploring along with you the PCB stakeholder target condition requirements for PCB sales & business development, engineering, design, procurement, manufacturing, test, inspection and customer satisfaction."

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