The company's approach to system control is to produce products that perform functions as efficiently as possible, yet make complexity invisible to the user.

Microcontrollers are helping home appliance manufacturers overcome critical design challenges in the areas of user and system control, motor control, connectivity, and communication. Microcontrollers also provide on-chip peripheral functions, eliminating the need for many external devices and helping reduce the cost and footprint of new appliance designs.

To get a customer's perspective on how these capabilities are used in today's and the next generation of home appliances, we interviewed Bob Houf, General Manager of Controls and Electronics at Whirlpool Corporation. With extensive experience in electronics engineering, circuit design, product development, marketing, and program management through the director level, Mr. Houf leads the organization responsible for all electronic controls that go into Whirlpool products.

Whirlpool Corporation is the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. Its brands—which include Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Brastemp, Bauknecht, and Consul—are marketed in more than 170 countries. In the competitive home appliance market, Whirlpool differentiates itself by focusing on innovation in its products. Mr. Houf talked with us about the ways electronics and semiconductors have enabled innovation in appliances and will take the industry in new directions in the future.

Whirlpool® kitchen appliances / Whirlpool® washer and dryer

Edge: The number of electronic components in home appliance systems has been increasing in recent years. What challenges does this present to Whirlpool as an appliance manufacturer?

Houf : At Whirlpool, we focus on extracting the value that technology brings to the marketplace. The white goods appliance market is perhaps one of the last to implement electronics at a deep level. Manufacturers such as Whirlpool who have been making appliances for nearly a century spent most of those years using electromechanical controls. Early in the transition to electronics, we simply reproduced the same performance that was available with electromechanical devices. Now we are at the point of realizing the true benefits of electronics by taking product efficiency and performance to new levels.

Nevertheless, as appliance manufacturers we must remember that we are in a consumer market. Even if consumers generally have become familiar with electronic devices, they don't want to see the complexity. An intuitive and friendly user interface is part of the product’s value. For that reason Whirlpool Corporation’s approach to system control is to get the job done as efficiently as possible while hiding the complexity. For example, the wash and spin cycles on a washer today can be set to eliminate so much water that the dryer requires minimal time and energy to get the clothes dry. The microcontroller enabling this action is run by a sophisticated, real-time software control algorithm based on a deep understanding of the machine's mechanics and hydraulics. But the consumer only has to push a couple of buttons to get the result.

Of course cost is an issue. Everyone knows that white goods companies are masters of negotiating the lowest piece-price from electronics suppliers. That's because we have to balance an equation of complexity, cost, and value—and therein lies the challenge. Over time appliance manufacturers will be adopting higher value components with more bandwidth and more memory. But the key will be to keep costs in line with the market. Even though consumers are beginning to replace major appliances more frequently, most people are not yet convinced that they need all the latest, greatest features in their washing machine or microwave oven. So a careful calculation of the cost-complexity-value equation is required.

Edge: Do you see any trends in consumer demand?

Houf : Every consumer has different wants, needs, and budget. But one thing all consumers seem to demand when it comes to electronics is intuitive control. They pay attention to the user interface and look for features such as touch-screen controls. And they don’t want to read an operating manual!

Speed and convenience are also big drivers in home appliances. Whirlpool has a new technology that allows a person to grill a steak quickly in the microwave oven. The steak is beautifully browned and has the lovely cross-hatch marks that used to come only from cooking on an outdoor grill. This same microwave oven can also be used for baking—something only a conventional oven could do before. The multi-tasking capability, by the way, is controlled by a Renesas H8S series microcontroller.

Edge: Are there differences in international markets?

Houf : Definitely. In Brazil we sell everything from the most basic units to sophisticated appliances that are the talk of the cocktail party. In Europe, where people's apartments are often quite small, the quiet dishwasher that recently took North America by storm has always been a necessity.

One product we believe demonstrates how Whirlpool combines innovation and an understanding of a specific customer segment is our Whitemagic™ Aquashower™ washer developed for India. Customers in India believe that whiteness of clothing expresses purity, and hand-washing of garments is the gold standard. So we developed a product that reproduces gentle hand-scrub movement and combined it with a "hot wash" technology to deliver the whitest possible results.

As you can imagine, each regional market has interesting drivers that ripple down through the design requirements to the control system specification and ultimately to the selection of components.

Edge: A lot has been written about interconnecting appliances using wireless technology. Is wireless networking of home appliances going to happen any time soon?

Houf : I would say that the future is still a bit fuzzy in that regard. Wireless technology is obviously of great interest to Whirlpool and other appliance manufacturers, but how the technology will be used and what standards will ultimately prevail are still unanswered questions. We must come back to the equation of cost, complexity, and value. Which approach among the many proposed will be affordable, relatively easy to implement, and add value to our products without requiring customers to spend hours on tech-support calls? What kind of infrastructure has to be in place in the home? How do we protect consumers against obsolescence? What is the value of wireless connectivity versus wired? In terms of a collective solution, the market is still in an embryonic stage.

Edge: As you've mentioned, microcontrollers can help you automate electromechanical functions and provide efficient control. What made you choose Renesas products? What do you expect from your microcontroller supplier in the way of products and support?

Houf : The appliance industry doesn't drive the development curve for control technology. We aren't pushing the limits of processing capability, bandwidth, bus size, or amount of memory. But we are cost-driven. Our goal at Whirlpool is to optimize the balance of component cost and performance as the complexity of our control system increases. It's an exciting challenge to handle the growing complexity of real-time control using a small, inexpensive, "non-leading-edge" piece of silicon. We require careful planning and a supplier with a roadmap that meets our needs.

Renesas has a roadmap that looks good to us, and we feel confident in the company's commitment to execute. Some of the essential features today are scalability, flash-based parts, parts with a good memory-to-cost ratio, integrated capability specific to certain applications, and the inclusion of motor control capability within the silicon itself. Of course the roadmap includes areas that will become more important as time goes on.

We also look to our supplier's technical support team to get parts that are correctly designed. But we also want a support team that shows up when promised with a smile on their faces. That level of support is a strength of Renesas that should not be discounted. The people are warm, appreciative, and technically competent. They are able to understand our requests accurately, in a way that correlates to the true application.

Having worked in semiconductor companies in the past, I've seen instances in which the supplier spends considerable time developing ideas around an application, but the approach is so different from that of the customer that ultimately the supplier's efforts add little value. I appreciate a supplier whose team has a real understanding of what the customer is trying to do.

Edge: Can you give any examples of how Renesas is contributing to Whirlpool's next generation of products?

Houf : Our new line of microwave ovens use the Renesas H8S 2320 series microcontroller to control the touch screen user interface. We chose that particular micro because the balance of cost and feature set fit our application quite well.

Our new washer series will incorporate the Renesas M16C/28 microcontroller, which has integrated 3-phase motor control circuit functions and on-chip peripherals in a very small but high performance package. We're also evaluating the use of Renesas' M16C/28 device for connecting appliances using ZigBee technology. We have a number of other Whirlpool appliances currently under development that use Renesas microcontrollers.

More than just these products, however, it's the roadmap we are developing with Renesas that will have an impact. As our teams get to know each other better, we understand each other's needs and constraints more profoundly, and this understanding influences the roadmap, taking us places that we hadn't realized we'd be able to go. That is the real benefit of a close collaboration.

Edge: Thank you for talking with us today and explaining what it takes to be a successful innovator in this market.