User guide

Executive Overview
1-2: Getting Started (An Overview)
Executive Overview
PCNs (Prototype Change Notices) track changes to a Bay Networks PCB
assembly’s electrical, mechanical, or programmed components prior to the first
production build. The PCNs provide data on which parts make up the assembly;
how much they cost and who sells them; and what lead time is involved in buying
them.
The PCN process coordinates, controls, and tracks the additions, deletions, or
changes of these parts. The PCN also notifies each member of the NPI product
team that a change has occurred. EDA is responsible for storing (and providing
access to) information about these changes, along with relevant schematics, layout
drawings, programmed device files, and so on.
Your job in this grand design depends on what you do at Bay Networks. You may
contribute by placing appropriate computer files in EDA data storage areas and
issuing a PCN, or you may read a PCN and coordinate purchasing of related parts,
or you may read a PCN and decide how to test the related printed circuit board.
You may even be a vendor working with Bay Networks, in which case you may
read PCNs to inform your own process of supplying layout information, building
raw boards, populating them with parts, or whatever.
The PCN process isn’t easy to explain without a lot of acronyms and names of
files and directories, and you probably don’t need to know about how it all works
to just get your job done. But if you look at it from a distance, here are the main
features:
• The corporate-wide SAP database gets downloaded regularly and updated.
• Engineers design PCBs and mechanical enclosures; put schematics, drawings,
software for programmable devices, and so on, into EDA-controlled
directories or data storage areas.
• Engineers use various tools to find and enumerate the parts they use. Some of
these tools generate files so that BOMs can be issued.
• Engineers can request that the BOMs get uploaded so that the SAP database
gets updated. The upload enables a PCN to be issued. Periodic or manual
EDA programs move data from the EDA-controlled directories to archive
locations. Email is sent to alert people that there’s a PCN.
• People read the PCNs and proceed as appropriate for their role in their
department.