Case study
Swift Navigation’s precise positioning technology platform improves location accuracy from several meters to centimeter-level and is used by millions of devices across the globe. Swift’s technology is trusted by users across industries, enabling safer driving, improving last-mile delivery and commercial transport operation efficiency, increasing accuracy for mobile devices and creating new possibilities for rail, robotics and machine control.
#reduced-development-costs
#clean-data
#version-control
#design-reviews
#version-control
Testimonial
Our customers partner with us to enhance collaboration, improve time-to-market speeds and reduce development costs. Discover how Swift Navigation leverages the power of allspice.io for their hardware designs.
Life before allspice.io
Before AllSpice, Swift’s design process was relatively standard. The primary difference was the storage and management of repos, with the team using one repo for various hardware products.
AllSpice encourages us to be more systematic in keeping our data clean and organized.
Everyone was trying to get a word in during those hours-long meetings.
Challenges
A major challenge was the monorepo—Swift’s hardware team needed to have version control and be able to version for individual projects and file storage.
Traditional, in-person meetings could lack documentation at times, and “everyone was trying to get a word in during those hours-long meetings.” – Jake Thystrup
Process improvement
Jake, the Technical Lead for Swift Navigation’s Hardware Team, began using AllSpice for managing design reviews. Denis NG, the Factory Test Engineer, uses more of the design feedback side of the platform.
After autonomously reviewing input, Jake and Denis can conduct meetings, ensuring everyone’s voice is heard. They also now have the ability to track changes and feedback, versions and what issues were accepted.
“Here’s an example of a current design review: a power regulator is rated lower than optimal, so there is not as much thermal dissipation on it, potentially leading to earlier than ideal failures which ‘we’re going to accept in the prototype phase.’ ”
“Before AllSpice, someone might not have written that down, and six months later, we get reports of RMAs and are left wondering, “what’s happening with that?’, triggering a potentially lengthy root cause analysis“
I’d describe AllSpice as convenient, intuitive, and systematic.
Current State
The traceability makes it easier for them to keep all of their feedback organized. “Before, that process wasted a lot of time.”
“Using Google Sheets had us scrambling for accuracy. Over time, if the person writing the meeting notes wasn’t entirely accurate, the team ended up losing a bit of information. In a few words conducive to order/ standardization, I’d describe having AllSpice as convenient, intuitive and systematic.”
“AllSpice encourages us to be more systematic in keeping our data clean and organized.”
Beating the learning curve
AllSpice also made collaboration with and teaching junior engineers a lot easier. “It has given us a quicker and tighter feedback loop.”
“A big advantage is that the platform makes collaboration much easier and helps junior engineers learn more quickly, thanks to the expedited feedback loop. I was able to help a new engineer build their first approved PCB in just two weeks. This feedback is beneficial because it allows for targeted reviews—you don’t have to waste time looking elsewhere or sorting through relevant information.”
Strengthening ISO 9001 process audits
“It’s great knowing that design reviews can show that all of the feedback is resolved or linked to issues. I can see edits from relevant stakeholders or team members. Tagging releases to relevant partners or software product requirements has been such an improvement for us.”
Favorite feature
“Snippets are great for giving feedback and pointing specifically to issues or questions, rather than going to someone and asking, ‘is that a low or high pass with C100 and R57, on page 3, quadrant B5, right after the [input] but before the [MCU GPIO]?’ Instead, visibility to the whole picture is worth a thousand words. AllSpice rapidly zooms in on the part you want to talk about – and what the issue is rather than having to try to find the thing on the circuit first.