As the nature of product development shifts to keep up with the pace of global innovation, electronics design engineers must understand that using the wrong tools can cripple a company's ability to innovate and deliver quality products on time. This whitepaper provides an overview of manufacturing tools like mechanical computer aided design (MCAD), product data management (PDM), electronic design automation (EDA) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) and describes how to bridge the gap between engineering and manufacturing.