Corporations now face an overwhelming task in managing the complex set of resources required to design and build eProducts. These are products that are differentiated by their electronic content and range from telecommunications equipment and computers to DVD players and automobiles.

The most important design resources are people. An eProduct usually involves teams for system, board, component, and software design. Other teams handle component and material procurement; test; field service; and subassembly and system manufacturing. These people often work in different geographical locations and use different software applications that sometimes run on different hardware platforms. But all of these people must collaborate efficiently to produce eProducts rapidly and at a high quality level.

Another key set of design resources consists of various forms of data, which serve as the links among people in a design project. This data generally includes schematics, libraries, HDL code (representing both hardware and software), simulation results, and bills of materials (BOM). Contributing to these data sets is component information for both off-the-shelf devices and intellectual property (IP). The latter may be developed in house for reuse or by third-parties and can range from entire subsystems to cores that become part of ASICs. Corporations must also manage engineering change orders (ECOs) and data exchanges between product data management (PDM), manufacturing resource planning (MRP), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

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