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DfE Thrives on Competition
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
By Paul Buckley, Newark
In Summary
A competition of electronic design for the global environment, Live EDGE invited electronic engineers, students, academics, and others interested in electronic engineering to submit designs for innovative products that use electronic components. These products will lead to a positive impact on the environment. This article explains why the competition is important for the industry.
From RoHS directives that demand lead-free manufacturing and reductions in hazardous waste, to those on improving efficiency of energy-using products or reducing the chemicals’ impact, recent years have brought legislation to minimize the harmful effects of modern lifestyle on the global environment. Innovation helps us make positive environmental contributions. This is why the eyes of the world are focused on the engineering community, namely electronics design and manufacturing sectors, to deliver innovations supporting the trappings of modern life with as little possible impact on the natural world. It was with these thoughts that Harriet Green, CEO, Premier Farnell, launched an international environmental design competition: Live EDGE.
The Challenge
A global design-for-the-environment (DfE) competition, Live EDGE invited electronic engineers, students, academics, and others interested in electronic engineering to submit designs for innovative products using electronic components toward a positive impact on the environment. The winning entry received a $50,000 prize, as well as a $50,000 support package to take their design into production stakes were high.
At the time of this writing, the entries for the competition were still being assessed under strict secrecy by a panel of distinguished judges from science, industry, academia, government, and environmental groups. The panel of judges comprised Sir Peter Gershon, chairman of Premier Farnell, plc; Sir David King, former U.K. government Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Office of Science; Mark Kenber, director, The Climate Change Group; Alla Cordery, Ph.D., head of electronics engineering at Oxford; Rob Rodin, CEO, RDN Group Inc.; and Max Huber, CEO, Sharp Europe.
In keeping with the theme of minimizing environmental impact, the awards ceremony was a virtual event hosted by Harriet Green in January 2008. Entrants, judges, design engineers, and spokespeople from Premier Farnell companies connected from multiple locations around the world via the Internet. For the competition results, visit smtonline.com.
Concept to Production
Along with a monetary prize, the winner can take advantage of a comprehensive support package that, over time, will include services of an electronics design consultancy to develop the winning design to prototype; assistance with legal matters and intellectual property (IP) registration; help with marketing and publicity; and support for securing investment funding. Premier Farnell committed to market the end product globally.
The reasons to create and support a global environmentally oriented electronics design competition are twofold. First, the role of a responsible corporate citizen should be taken seriously, a key aspect of which relates to seeking ways to reduce environmental impact. Secondly, many designers have ideas for products that could contribute to the environment positively but have no way either because it doesn’t fit within the requirements of their current job, or because they don’t have access to the appropriate resources to turn ingenious ideas into reality. The timing was right; by the time the competition deadline passed in November 2007, the Live EDGE Website received half a million hits and over 3,400 registrants from more than 100 countries.
Judging
Rather than assessing all entries on a single issue such as reduction of carbon dioxide emissions or eliminating harmful substances each entry that made the shortlist stood against a range of criteria. These included its underlying technical merit, an assessment of the real-life usefulness of the application, its originality and innovation, power efficiency and innovative use of component technologies, and the design’s positive impact on the environment.
Finally, judges were tasked with assessing design for manufacture (DfM), namely the design’s feasibility and implementation with reference to making best use of existing development and manufacturing techniques. A key aspect of this assessment was compatibility of the product design and chosen components with modern, efficient, lead-free, automated SMT manufacturing processes.
Ingenuity and Talent
Along with the sheer volume of entries, what became clear to the judging panel quickly was a wealth of ingenuity and talent from students through to professional designers and retired engineers among the global electronic engineering community. The ideas, for example, for deployment of the latest variable-speed motors and electronic motor-control ICs; innovative use of high-brightness/low-power LED technologies; lateral thinking, in terms of making the best possible use of heat dissipated by electronic equipment; incorporation of advanced processor and sensing technology to manage out inefficiencies intelligently; and integration of disparate technologies ranging from wireless communications to microcontrollers to create elegant, environmentally friendly solutions impressed the panel.
What’s more, it would seem that no application area has been left untouched, with entries covering solutions for everything from vehicles to home appliances, lighting to power supplies and power sources, and cooling and ventilation systems to consumer electronics products.
The Next Challenge
In line with the commitment to innovation for environmental benefit and with the aim of building on the success of Live EDGE, we are considering several initiatives to support engineers’ quests for environmentally friendly designs. Contribute your own ideas that will make the world in which we will live a better place for all.
Paul Buckley, senior VP, product & supplier management, Newark, may be contacted at pbuckley@newark.com. To learn more about this year’s Live EDGE, visit www.live-edge.com.