Fundamentals of Component Data Management

If you are not exactly sure what Component Data Management (CDM) really is, or why it is important to you as en electrical engineer, you are reading the right article at the right time in your career.

The first thing we need to do is to define exactly what we mean when we say CDM. Let’s say that we are focusing on CDM in the context of designing and building printed circuit boards.

Irrespective of whether a circuit board is large or small, it is going to carry a number of components, which may include resistors, capacitors, inductors, etc. A high-level and, as we shall see, highly simplified view of CDM is a process by which we manage the components we wish to use on a PCB, all the way through the board’s development process. This starts with the original component selections made by the design engineers, and continues through the board layout to verification, component procurement, design-for-manufacture, and finally board population and assembly.