Employee Interview: Ashley Eckhoff & Electronic Origami

image via Origamiancy on Flickr

At PLM Connection two months ago, a customer of ours asked me if I knew Ashley Eckhoff, who works in the same building I do, just on a different floor. I did not but was interested to learn more about how he did his job. He’s been so busy gathering customer requirements for NX 8 that he dodged an interview several times. But I caught up with him today.

Ashley has the fun and sometimes tough job of gather requirements from customers and then figuring out how we build what they need into our product in a way that serves many customers.



He told me one idea that came from a customer turned into the NX Flexible Printed Circuit Design software. The customer designs cameras and does what Ashley called “electronic origami,” folding PCBs (printed circuit boards) smaller and smaller to fit inside a camera. They used to design the flat and folded shape separately. So the software helps them cut their design time in half.