Technological innovation and development have brought new market opportunities to the electronics industry, while also imposing enormous business challenges. Electronics enterprises are required to launch more competitive products to the market at a faster pace. The drawbacks and problems exhibited by underperforming enterprises fully demonstrate the business challenges confronting the electronics industry:

1.53% of enterprises need to invest additional resources in new products and projects to address the escalating complexity caused by insufficient collaboration and low coordination efficiency across various domains and teams.

2.32% of enterprises still adopt discrete and sequential design methods and processes, leading to a lack of sustained and effective collaboration among professional teams specializing in mechanics, electronics, electrical engineering, software, optics, acoustics and other fields during new product development.

3.21% of enterprises lack systematic data management methods and processes. Manual data transfer is often conducted between design, manufacturing and other stages, resulting in poor data quality, data inconsistency and incompatibility, which in turn cause manufacturing delays.

4.35% of enterprises rely heavily on late-stage physical verification and prototypes, requiring a large number of engineering changes to meet business objectives such as product reliability and quality.

These exposed drawbacks and problems make us clearly recognize the following realities for the electronics industry: the time window for technological innovation is becoming increasingly shorter; achieving cross-supply chain collaboration is growing more difficult; failure to achieve zero defects will lead to losses in revenue and market share; and the manufacturing environment needs to be closed-loop, intelligent and integrated.While some enterprises are lagging behind, there are also top performers. Let us look at the characteristics of the world’s leading electronics companies. By implementing effective engineering initiatives—such as improving production efficiency through advanced tools and processes, adopting unified and scientific data management, enabling efficient collaboration across multiple teams, and applying extensive simulation analysis and virtual verification—these enterprises have achieved high standards in product cost, time-to-market, quality and revenue.

Electronics Industry Solutions

一、 Overall Solution Architecture for the Electronics Industry

In light of the aforementioned development trends, challenges, and key business requirements of the electronics industry, we propose the following overall solution framework:

This solution framework comprises 5 digital pillars:

1.Electronic System Design: Mechatronics co-design & system-of-systems design

2.Performance Engineering: Performance & reliability throughout the development process

3.Supplier Collaboration: Supplier/partner collaboration in design and manufacturing processes

4.Smart Manufacturing: Smart manufacturing for PCBA and complete product assembly

5.Integrated Lifecycle Management: Integrated product and software development processes & a collaborative platform for design and manufacturing

Next, we will elaborate on these 5 digital pillars in detail.

二、Electronic System Design

An electronic system mainly covers two core disciplines: mechanics and electronics; complex electronic systems also include electrical engineering. Siemens offers a full suite of integrated solutions for the mechanical, electronic, and electrical domains of electronic systems, including:

1）3D structural design: NX and SolidEdge

2）Electronic circuit design: Xpedition and PADS

3）Electrical and wire harness design: Capital

4）Mechanical, electronic, and electrical integrated collaborative design – this not only integrates Siemens’ own products but also enables collaborative design with other mainstream tools, mainly including:

Mechanical & electronic collaboration

— Conflict-free collaborative work between electronic and mechanical teams in their respective environments

— ECAD&MCAD Bidirectional Collaborative Design

· Xpedition & NX

· Xpedition & MCAD

· NX & ECAD

• Mechanical & electrical collaboration

• Space reservation and trade-off studies

• Wiring integration

• Wire harness integration

• JT viewer integration

• Cross-probing

• Electronic & electrical collaboration

• Accelerate timing programming design through integrated collaborative design

• Achieve "right-first-time" design by understanding the real contextual environment

• Early design validation and verification

Additionally, Siemens provides DFM (Design for Manufacturing) verification for PCBA. During the design phase, automated and rapid DFM verification can be performed to check design rules for manufacturability, identifying electronic design issues at an early stage.

三、 Performance Engineering

Throughout the electronic product development process, Siemens offers Simcenter – a performance and reliability simulation and verification solution spanning from chip level, board level, system level, product level to large-scale data centers. Simcenter’s innovative integrated engineering simulation solution delivers simulation and verification capabilities for electronic products in terms of thermal performance, structural integrity, dust and humidity resistance, acoustics, and electromagnetic performance.

Particularly in thermal performance analysis, Siemens’ Simcenter Flotherm stands out from the crowd. It not only provides comprehensive thermal performance analysis but also seamlessly integrates with MCAD, PLM, and EDA tools.

Meanwhile, Siemens also offers HEEDS – a solution for multidisciplinary optimization, design exploration, and analysis. It can automatically execute and accelerate the engineering design space exploration process.

四、 Supplier Collaboration

Supplier collaboration is indispensable throughout the design and manufacturing processes of electronic products. The level of collaboration between suppliers and OEMs varies according to the roles of suppliers, which can be generally categorized into three tiers: low, medium, and high. For low and medium collaboration tiers, Siemens offers the Teamcenter Supplier Collaboration solution; for high-level collaboration, it provides the Teamcenter Partner Connect solution. These two solutions fully cover all three supplier collaboration modes.

Teamcenter Supplier Collaboration delivers four core capabilities: basic supplier collaboration management, design data exchange, direct material sourcing, and supplier project management. It helps enterprises collaborate with their suppliers safely and efficiently during the design and manufacturing processes.

Teamcenter Partner Connect enables partners to directly access product data within the PLM system under permission and security controls. Its key capabilities include:Managing partner lists (e.g., contract manufacturers)；Assigning partners to products and controlling their access permissions；Allowing partners to participate in product change processes and view product change data；Restricting partner access to only approved content。

五、Smart Manufacturing

Electronic product manufacturing generally consists of three phases: component machining, PCBA assembly, and complete product assembly. Siemens provides an integrated manufacturing solution covering manufacturing planning, process engineering, production planning and scheduling, manufacturing execution, and manufacturing analytics. Combined with the aforementioned DFM (Design for Manufacturing) verification and mechatronics design, it truly achieves a closed-loop smart manufacturing process for electronic products.

Siemens offers a lean manufacturing process planning, design, and management solution centered on 3D Structured Bill of Processes (BOP). It covers the three key phases of electronic product manufacturing—component machining, PCBA assembly, and complete product assembly—and provides effective support for New Product Introduction (NPI) in the electronics industry.

This structured BOP data can be directly transmitted to downstream production systems such as ERP and MES without manual offline conversion. In addition to traditional 2D work instructions, it also provides 3D interactive animated work instructions, which visually demonstrate product machining and assembly processes and can be directly deployed to the shop floor for on-site production guidance.

Data generated from 3D structured processes—including MBOM, process routing BOP, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), process parameters, and manufacturing resources—can be directly sent to downstream production systems (ERP and MES) for production guidance and cost accounting. Meanwhile, process and quality feedback data collected by the MES can be transmitted back to the process management system. This enables a seamless bidirectional data flow between the process planning and production departments, thereby fostering collaboration between process planning and manufacturing execution.

Most enterprises in the electronics industry rely on physical prototype trials for process and production validation, which significantly increases manufacturing cycles and costs.

Siemens provides a digital virtual manufacturing verification solution, including: component machining simulation, assembly simulation, human simulation and ergonomics, robot offline programming and simulation optimization, 3D factory layout design and optimization, and production and logistics simulation optimization. It helps enterprises identify process issues and production bottlenecks in advance through digital means, thereby optimizing processes and adopting optimal production plans.

In terms of production planning and scheduling, Siemens offers the Opcenter APS advanced planning and scheduling solution, enabling efficient planning and scheduling for PCBA and complete product assembly. The key capabilities of Opcenter APS include: conducting medium-to-long-term planning and detailed scheduling; optimizing SMT grouping to minimize changeovers; optimizing production schedules for PCB and complete product assembly; forecasting production variations as well as the impact caused by terminal and machine failures and scrap rates; prioritizing orders and implementing batch production, etc. It supports the transition to high-demand mixed-mode production without compromising factory performance, enhancing visibility, responsiveness to changes, productivity, and on-time delivery capabilities.

In terms of production process management, Siemens provides Opcenter Execution Electronics, a manufacturing execution management solution tailored specifically for the electronics industry, enabling process control for PCBA, components, and complete product assembly. This industry-specific solution covers the entire electronic production workflow, such as pre-production and production execution, with the following capabilities:Converting production plans into shop-floor manufacturing orders and assigning tasks；Enabling paperless execution and process tracking for electronic production processes；Conducting quality inspections throughout the electronic production process, as well as full-cycle quality traceability and analysis；Supporting graphical defect recording and remediation；Managing resource data efficiently；Implementing JIT material management across the entire factory.

Furthermore, with out-of-the-box equipment connectivity for electronics workshops, Siemens provides Opcenter Execution Electronics IoT—a scalable, reliable, plug-and-play solution for data collection, control, and big data analytics tailored for electronic product manufacturing. It offers the following capabilities:Performing online process control and interlocking；Enabling governance and data integration for the MOM ecosystem；Realizing enterprise and multi-plant visualization；Providing real-time monitoring and performance analysis dashboards；Conducting SPC, trend and KPI calculations, prediction, and alarm management.