Meet APAG

APAGCoSyst, a global electronic design and production center, has illuminated the automotive, and medical industries since 1954. From its precision-driven roots in Switzerland to its bustling production hub in Windsor, Canada, APAG crafts advanced lighting and electronic control units (ECUs) for elite OEMs.

APAG’s RFQ Response Challenge

Facing pressure to outpace rivals in responding to RFQs, APAG found that traditional design methods, often taking weeks to research components, generate BoMs, and validate designs, threatened to stall responses, risking lost opportunities. Time constraints on manual design processes also yielded shallow feasibility insights and imprecise cost estimates, which could undermine bid confidence.
Manual design processes often took weeks to research components and estimate costs, risking delayed responses in competitive RFQ races.

Meet Bernhard, APAG’s electronics design pioneer

With manual tools too slow to meet RFQ demands, Bernhard Edlinger, APAG’s Team Leader, sought a solution to automate their electronics design workflows, while ensuring quality and meeting their customer’s stringent technical requirements.

Our OEM clients demand rapid, flawless bids. In a cutthroat market, we envisioned leveraging AI and automation to revolutionize our electronics design process, ensuring speed and precision that win contracts. Circuit Mind proved it was possible, and then made it our reality.

— Bernhard Edlinger, Team Leader, APAG

Bernhard and APAG partnered with Circuit Mind to bring their vision for electronics design automation to life

APAG’s Rapid Response to an EV Lighting RFQ

When a major electric vehicle manufacturer dropped an RFQ for a cutting-edge interior lighting system with communication interfaces, APAG seized the opportunity. The EV maker required a sophisticated design delivered at breakneck speed.

Facing fierce competition and a ticking clock, APAG turned to Circuit Mind’s ACE platform to automate their electronics design workflow, gaining a competitive advantage in speed and precision that transformed the EV-maker’s RFQ into a bold, actionable bid.

Critical Time Saved

For the interior lighting project, APAG budgeted 9 days to complete the BoM research and documentation process. It was completed in just 2 days using Circuit Mind’s ACE platform.

ACE enabled APAG to move from requirements to optimized design architecture in minutes, for the digital and power portions of the circuit design, automatically generating an optimized BoM, procurement analysis, and design verification. Each auto-generated design also included a fully functional schematic – exported to Altium, to share with the customer. Including manual analog design and circuit layout, the entire design process was completed in just 2 days, achieving a 78% time reduction to generate a bid-ready design package.

Design Exploration & Optimization

Time savings wasn’t the only benefit – automation made it possible for APAG to explore multiple design candidates, allowing them to select a design which is most optimized for cost. In minutes, ACE generated 3 designs, from trillions of BoM options thoroughly explored, resulting in BoM cost reductions and the selection of the best cost concept.

Bernhard used ACE to achieve these design options by experimenting with different architectures and functional block requirements, always optimizing 100% for cost (vs. size and power). Bernhard then chose the best-suited architecture to move forward with the rest of the design.

New Productivity

Quantifying new productive hours, which otherwise wouldn’t have been feasible to perform manually for design exploration and optimization, APAG gained an additional 6 days of valuable time, factoring component research, selection, and compability verification (schematic generation):

The Process

Here’s how Circuit Mind transformed APAG’s EV interior lighting project.

Requirements Definition

Requirements for the EV lighting project were modeled as a block diagram in ACE, capturing needs for each functional block. The flexible block diagram input easily allowed for exploration of the three alternative architectures to best optimize for cost while meeting the OEM’s performance constraints.

Automated Schematic and BOM Generation

For each architecture, ACE generated a fully functional and optimized schematic and BOM in minutes, for the digital and power portions of the circuit design. Bernhard chose the best design to move forward to layout.

Export to Altium for Sharing with the Customer

The chosen schematic design was exported to Altium, complete with project files and symbols. These files were shared with the customer as part of the RFQ, helping APAG demonstrate expertise and attention to detail, going above and beyond what is expected with a typical RFQ response.

Procurement Analysis Generation and Optimization

ACE ensured the selection of components that were available in stock, in the required quantity, and cost-effective from trusted distributors, enabling precise cost estimates for the RFQ bid.

Verification Checks

Although ACE’s design algorithms ensure a mathematically correct design, ACE also ran a series of automated checks – interface pull-up checks, voltage margin checks, I2C address checks, derating checks, and more – as a redundancy, looking for the most common errors that are made by design engineers.

Design for Derating

ACE generated a design derating capacitors as specified, derating temperature, resistor power dissipation and more. A derating report was auto-generated for derating verification by APAG’s Electronics Engineers.

About APAG

APAG delivers specialized electronics and lighting solutions for automotive, medical, and high-demand industrial sectors. Collaborating closely with clients, APAG’s innovative Research & Development team designs and develops tailored concepts, transforming creative ideas into reality. With flexible, state-of-the-art production capabilities, APAG ensures high-quality output, from basic assembled PCBs to fully packaged, finished components.
Learn more at apagcosyst.com.

About Circuit Mind

For design firms like APAG, where rapid RFQ responses and product development are make-or-break, Circuit Mind’s AI-powered design automation transforms complex electronics proposals into a fast, winning process. Whether it’s slashing response times, delivering deep feasibility insights, or providing schematics and BOMs upfront, Circuit Mind delivers—concept to bid-ready design in days, not weeks.

Book a meeting with us to see how AI-powered design automation can work. for your team.