Customer Story

Renesas Leverages Aras for Industry-Leading Integration in Semiconductor Sector

 Renesas
Size
21,000+ employees
Industry
High-Tech Electronics

Challenge

Development culture, business process, IT resources, and product design data were scattered across multiple systems due to a string of mergers and acquisitions

Solution

Unify business and technology resources in a single, highly scalable, and flexible PLM platform: Aras Innovator

Outcomes

  • Centralized information management
  • Reduced time spent on data management
  • Promoted IP reuse
  • Improved accuracy for management, data searchability, and IP royalty management

Renesas is a major global semiconductor company with locations in more than 20 countries worldwide. After several mergers and acquisitions over the years, the company struggled with system inheritance and data management. Renesas implemented Aras Innovator to unify its data, processes, and systems and set the company up for future growth and success.

“Documents are centrally managed, the time and effort required to search for data has been dramatically reduced, and information sharing has become much easier. As a result, we have achieved a reduction in man-hours for design information management.”

Hidetaka Nishimura, Director of Product Development Support Systems Department, Information Systems Management Department, Renesas.

Pain Points

Renesas is a major global semiconductor company located in more than 20 countries. Renesas is a world leader in microcontroller (MC), analog, power semiconductor, and SoC (system-on-a-chip) products. Semiconductor large-scale integrated circuits (LSI) are part of the core of the business.

Renesas’ LSI design extends to hardware, drivers, and middleware. The company also develops personalized applications for customers. Combining multiple products and software is often necessary for Renesas’ LSI (large-scale integration) design. This makes for significant complexity in the product lifecycle.

In addition to Renesas’ complex product lifecycle, various mergers and acquisitions over the years created challenges around system inheritance and data management. Development culture, business processes, and IT resources had to be integrated along with product design data — all scattered across multiple systems.

As a result, Renesas struggled with inefficient data management, including challenges with retrieving, browsing, editing, and reusing design data.

PLM Requirements

Renesas decided it needed a consolidated platform to keep up with rapid changes in the global LSI market. Additionally, as the company integrated new businesses after M&A, it needed to streamline internal processes and systems to avoid inefficiency and redundancies.

Renesas also needed a platform that could accommodate its unique product needs. For example, early in its search, Renesas found that most PLM systems were developed by mechanical CAD tool vendors that couldn’t offer the functionality required by the EDA (electronic design automation) tools used to design semiconductors (which are different from CAD tools used in mechanical design).

  • A unified platform that could integrate systems  
  • Standardization of business processes 
  • Highly scalable PLM for global expansion (with global support) 
  • Flexibility to adjust to changes in composition and business operations 
  • Ability to roll out to the entire company in phases

Successes with Aras Innovator

According to Renesas, when it came to finding a cost-competitive integrated management system that could solve all of these problems, the only solution was Aras Innovator.

Aras Innovator is principally used in the company’s design department by about 5,000 people at two domestic and five overseas locations. Aras Innovator was introduced in stages across various business processes, including product development management, development defect information management, intellectual property (IP) management, and IP deliverables management.

Renesas worked closely with Aras to ensure the platform met its unique and specific needs. For example, when a Renesas team member shares IP information with overseas bases, it’s considered a “technology export” and must adhere to the laws of each country. Renesas customized the functions of Aras Innovator to conform to its needs across project management, product engineering, and document management. Renesas also worked closely with Aras to develop functionality to support export management and Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

Results: Renesas Leads the Semiconductor Industry Through Centralized PLM

With Aras Innovator implemented at Renesas, information management is now centralized, data management time is reduced, IP reuse is promoted, and management accuracy, data searchability, and IP royalty management accuracy are improved.

Freeing designers from manual work and design management also allows them to focus more on their original design work. Aras Innovator’s low-code platform also allows teams to quickly add new systems without having to write complicated programs, making it easy for Renesas to adapt the system to its workflows and further improve efficiency.

In the future, Renesas plans to implement new functions and expand the IP royalty management function using Aras Innovator, as well as build an “OpsHub” that links Aras with other major development tools; “SAFe,” an agile development method; and Systems Engineering. There are also plans to explore the use of applications such as Systems Architecture.