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Communication keys switch design
By Alain Janniere, VP, R&D, Switch Products ITT Industries, Cannon Dole, France -- Design News, April 22, 2002
Alain Janniere has degrees in mechanical engineering from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts et Métiers and the Institut Superieur des Materiaux et de la Construct-ion Mécanique. His career has included design and construction of automated machines for magnetic-tape, transistor-assembly, and plastics-machinery applications. He joined ITT in 1975 as a switch industrial engineering manager in charge of switch development.
In the global marketplace, design engineers and their customers can be anywhere. Good communication thus becomes vital to take advantage of technology developments.
DESIGN NEWS: What trends are you seeing in global switch technology and what's driving them?
Janniere: Firstly, ergonomic issues are of increasing importance in our switch designs. Switches used repeatedly in many applications must address the human factors of operating force, tactile feel, and noise level. These switches are the focal point of the user-end product interface. Consequently, switches are often the signature of the devices driven by them.
Even seldom-used switches, such as for power on/off, not only need compliance with electrical ratings but also cosmetic considerations because they often feature buttons integrated into a design. Switches for portable devices are not only getting smaller but seeing an increase in the number of functions they perform. Lastly, in interconnecting with electronic circuits, surface-mount switches can be considered standard technology, but soldering processes have to move to lead-free solders. The switches must be process-compatible, especially in terms of terminal platings and higher soldering temperatures. The smart solution to eliminate the lead-free issue is solderless interconnections with spring fingers or pogo pins.
Q: What breakthroughs do you see in the next five years?
A: There will be niche applications for piezo switches, Hall-effect switches, opto switches, but the most promising evolution should be integration of MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) in multifunction switches.
Q: How can engineers best take advantage of new technologies?
A: The product design engineers must provide the switch designers with a full picture of the projected application, well beyond the electromechanical specifications. The switch designer can then propose optimized ideas integrating the requirements across the entire switch lifetime—from shipment to switch handling and placement, interconnection, final test, and, last but not least, material recycling. At every step of the life cycle, there is room for optimization in terms of total cost—for example, integrating the switch with other components, and design innovations to ease both switch manufacture and installation. Optimization to benefit from new technologies requires teamwork between customers and switch vendors.
Q: What are the major challenges facing switch design engineers and their customers?
A: First is to establish a good degree of mutual confidence between switch designers and the customer's product design engineers, without short circuiting the customer's sourcing and purchasing people. Second is to ensure first-class communication and dialog with a customer who may be sitting thousands of miles from the switch designer. Third is to follow a strict process with many checkpoints to avoid misunderstandings in the design process.
Q: What skills are important for today's switch design engineers?
A: The most important skill is communication in asking good questions, providing timely information, and checking that there is no "black hole" in the project. Then what makes the difference between a good and average switch designer is the creativity and learning from past experiences and problems.
Q: How do you design for shorter and shorter time-to-market?
A: In the last eight years, we and our competitors have cut development cycle time by a factor of three. This has been possible thanks to: better initial definition of customer needs; CAD design and simulation; expedited prototype availability in three to five weeks; concurrent design and manufacture of piece-part hard tooling and startup of the automated assembly, testing, and packaging machines. Our whole process is carried out according to our IPD (Integrated Product Development) procedure, which we are evolving into VBPD (Value Based Product Development) with new tools to better determine customer needs.
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