Globalization in an Analog/Mixed-Signal World

The biggest issue driving globalization is labor. Until recently, companies in the U.S. could rely on a ready supply of homegrown engineering talent as well as a stream of newly minted graduates from overseas who were drawn to the U.S. by the promise of opportunity and advancement. Even students mid-way through their college engineering programs often transferred to the U.S. to complete their studies, and then stayed on after graduation to contribute to the technology industry and national economy.

But circumstances have changed. Not only is post-9/11 scrutiny making it harder to attract foreign-born talent, but also many foreign countries now offer a wealth of opportunities for aspiring engineers, diminishing the appeal of a move to the U.S. for education and career. As immigration of engineers has declined, the population of engineers in North America has decreased while the availability of engineers in their native countries has increased. These trends have precipitated an entirely new environment for engineering, design, and product development. The era of globalization has arrived, and it is very much here to stay.

The most visible manifestation of globalization is outsourcing, a concept that involves more than just one company handing off a function to another company. Outsourcing can also involve a large, vertically integrated company offshoring a particular skillset to a business unit or subsidiary located in a geography that is better suited—in both talent and environment—to a particular function. Hence, we see technical managers in all types of large and small companies facing the challenges of globalization—the handling of culturally and linguistically diverse teams dispersed across multiple geographies and time zones.

Managing the global team

For large IC manufacturers trying to coordinate internal teams located around the world—as well as for smaller companies seeking to optimize relationships with other design shops, outside consultants, and customers with operations in other locales—the skillset required to manage diverse teams is complex and often difficult to master. But failure in this area is not an option. At Tanner EDA, we have developed a set of strategies to help customers overcome the hurdles of a globalized semiconductor supply chain. As illustrated in Figure 1, globalization strategy must encompass overlapping issues of corporate management, CAD management, and engineering management.

Almost every customer we deal with today is involved in projects that never sleep; design continues 24 hours a day, around the world. Even more importantly, as the complexity of the projects increases, so does the size of the teams. A chip developed today may have 50 to 100 different "sets of hands" working on some aspect of the product, which means that management must act aggressively to control these projects.

Managers must accept that they can no longer rely on many of the traditional factors that caused project teams to have coherence in the past—factors such as a common sense of purpose, a shared history, or the bonding that comes from a group of people working down the hall. In this age of globalization, a team will often be assembled for a single project, only meet face-to-face at the outset of that project, and then disband as soon as the project is complete.

It is imperative, then, that within the short-lived timeframe of a modern-day project, teams communicate effectively so that they can begin work immediately and work together efficiently to meet their time-to-market and ROI targets without fail. If a product is to succeed in competitive, fast-paced global markets, managers must make sure that the integration of the product team, even across geographies and technologies, happens seamlessly.

At Tanner EDA, we believe that working on a common platform such as Microsoft Windows can provide the make-or-break difference. Design tools should be readily accessible, easily downloadable, and always characterized by an easy ramp-up and learning curve. Tools that fit this description guarantee the speedy empowerment of the project team—a compelling argument in favor of Windows, which is an internationalized, locally managed software platform.