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Collaboration

How Mass Customization is Changing the Manufacturing Industry

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Henry Ford, once rather famously said, “The customer can have it painted any color he wants, as long as it’s black.” Back in 1909 that type of business model worked. Customers clamored for the low prices offered by economies of scale, rather than a more expensive product that fit their unique needs.

Ford was able to meet this demand for affordable cars with a mass production business model that minimized variation, while maximizing efficiency. Today, however, the rules have changed.

Customers demand personalized products

Customers today want products tailored to their specific needs and personal tastes. Enter the era of mass customization. One definition of mass customization is developing a product architecture, within which an indeterminate number of products variants can be configured dynamically by the customer at the point of sale, and with minimal engineering intervention.

Demand for configurability and personalization presents a threat to traditional mass production techniques. According to the Smart Customization Group at MIT, by the year 2020, 15% of the clothing Americans buy will be customized for fit, color and style.

Nike and Puma websites enable users to create customized shoes using a variety of exotic materials and bold patterns.
Nike and Puma websites enable users to create customized shoes using a variety of exotic materials and bold patterns.

It’s not just highly personal products, such as clothing however. Automotive customers can mock up their dream ride using a simple design application on the company’s website or a smart phone app. Desktop and notebook computers are highly customizable for features and appearance.

It’s easy to see that customer collaboration in the design process is quickly becoming the norm, but manufacturers today still face a difficult conundrum: how do they improve their focus on customer demands by offering highly customized products, but still maintain the efficiencies of a mass-production model?

Different approaches to customization

Companies have taken a number of different approaches to solving this problem. Some negotiate contracts, estimate cost and effort, and assign engineering resources to develop products directly for customers. This model, known as Engineer-to-Order (ETO), is prevalent today in construction, aerospace and defense.

While this approach works for many companies, ETO falls short for a number of reasons. Since these products are unique to each order, the engineering processes used to develop these products are also unique as well. This lack of predictability is heavy on operating costs, and usually requires extensive engineering attention on a per-order basis, limiting time spent on innovation and new product development.

Other companies attempt to tweak the mass production model by pre-configuring a set of product variants, and mass-producing each variant. This model is not without its shortcomings. To produce predictably and efficiently, the number of variations must be strictly limited.

A company whose customers’ needs are unpredictable, or require a substantial number of product variations, may find that pre-defining a massive number of bills of material (BOM) combinations can be difficult or impossible.

Benefits of a modern mass customization model

As the product of a marriage between mass-production and ETO, mass customization allows businesses to inherit the dominant traits of each: high efficiency paired with a high degree of customer focus. The following are some of the business opportunities inherent in this approach:

Customer satisfaction. Delivery times are shortened, extraneous features are reduced, and the utility offered to each individual customer is maximized. A mass customization strategy can help to ensure accurate quotes, lead times, and interpretation of customer requirements.

Business value. Products that are configured to meet unique customer needs have the potential to reach a wider audience, and have a greater range of application than those that are mass-produced, offering companies the chance to increase the footprint in their respective markets. Also a company optimized for mass customization minimizes the costs of order fulfillment.

Innovation. By solving order fulfillment problems, engineers can focus on new product development, innovative R&D projects, and designing new configuration options for the products in existing portfolios. Mass customization also creates an interface between the manufacturer and the customer, enabling collaboration and open innovation.

Mass customization presents an enticing promise, but as a manufacturing trend it is still in its infancy, and companies may find that the availability of industry testimonials and academic research is under-developed. The bottom line, however, is that all companies must find out how to make some type of mass customization work for them.

Mass customization has the potential to help companies increase revenue and gain com­petitive advantage, improve cash flow, and reduce waste through on-demand production. Mass customization can also generate valuable data that may be used in the development of standard products and in online marketing and public-relations campaigns.

Barb Schmitz

7 Career Advancement Tips for Engineers

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There’s more to being a successful engineer than being good at math and science. Regardless of whether you graduated in May or 20 years ago, there are tips and strategies you can employ to increase your chances of career advancement, some of which might be surprising. So let’s take a look at some of these tips that all engineers can use to assure themselves that their careers remain on the right path.

1. Think like a businessman. This one might surprise many of you, but the reality is that engineering firms are increasingly seeking out engineers who can think like businesspeople. They want engineers who have been involved with strategy and planning and know their way around a balance sheet and income statements. All engineers need to understand how the total costs to produce your company’s products affect business decisions.

2. Think outside the box. In this case, the “box” is your respective discipline. You might have gone to college to study mechanical engineering, but many of today’s complex products contain software and embedded electronics so there will be times when design issues will confront you that fall outside of your technical discipline. Learn the basics of other relevant disciplines, such as electronic and software design.

3. Be a team player. Collaborative design is a part of reality for today’s product development efforts and design teams have now been expanded to include more and more people, many of which are outside of engineering. All these disciplines must come together to resolve complex issues and formulate solutions to bring products to market. As a result, communication and other “soft” skills are as important as technical expertise.

4. Be an innovator. Innovation in new products is what sets successful companies apart from their competitors. Always be open to new ideas, even if they come from sources outside your group. Beware of the “Not-Invented-Here” bias that exists at some companies. Companies will reward engineers who encourage innovative ideas, regardless of where they originated.

To be successful and advance in their jobs, engineers must play an active part in feeding their company's innovation pipeline.
To be successful and advance in their jobs, engineers must play an active part in feeding their company’s innovation pipeline.

5. Be an active alum. Keep in touch with your alma mater by offering to participate in technical societies to increase your networking reach and writing technical papers and/or organizing technical sessions at association conferences to enhance both your experience and your company’s reputation.

6. Keep learning. This is crucial as the tools used to do product design and analysis are constantly changing and improving. Stay ahead of the curve and seek out new assignments and opportunities to learn new technologies, sign up for training programs and make the most of company-paid educational benefits. Also, if possible, attend events put on by professional organizations, such as the American Society of Civil Engineers or the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

7. Work on your “soft” skills. All forms of communication–written and verbal–are critical to advancement in engineering. If you’re an engineer who wants to eventually advance into a management role, you’ll need to be comfortable talking to customers, giving presentations and working with outside suppliers, agencies, etc. So developing these “soft” skills is vital. Toastmasters International, a non-profit organization, is a great place to get your feet wet in public speaking.

Barb Schmitz

GrabCAD Announces Integration with PTC Creo and Workbench Summer 2014 Release

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It appears the folks at GrabCAD have been quite busy. The Cambridge-based startup is making two significant announcements today: the integration of its Workbench cloud-based file management platform with PTC Creo CAD software and the release of Workbench Summer 2014.

Since PTC Live Global was just held this week in Boston, we’ll start with that one. The integration of Workbench with Creo means that users will now have a host of new capabilities that are available only to PTC Creo users. These new capabilities include:
● The ability to view native models
● The ability to view Creo drawings and other proprietary Creo documents
● The ability to interact with assembly information, such as family table instances

In addition, the processing power for all of the above actions will be provided by the GrabCAD cloud platform, freeing up the user’s desktop for other tasks. GrabCAD and PTC will roll out these new capabilities over the next several months to both new and existing PTC Creo and Workbench users.

“PTC Creo is the CAD tool of choice for many of the companies that use Workbench, whose users appreciate the ability to access an integrated set of design, simulation and manufacturing tools in one suite,” said Hardi Meybaum, founder and CEO of GrabCAD. “We’re excited that this integration with PTC Creo will make it even easier for these users to keep track of CAD files and bring others into their design process quickly and easily.”

GrabCAD Workbench is a cloud-based file management platform that makes it easier for users to manage and share CAD files.
GrabCAD Workbench is a cloud-based file management platform that makes it easier for users to manage and share CAD files.

Summer Release 2014

The company also announced that July 1st it will ship its Summer Release of GrabCAD Workbench. Already boasting CAD file management and external collaboration features, Workbench makes it easy for mid-sized companies to better deal with CAD file management.

The Summer Release’s new capabilities include:
● Flexible search capabilities. Search on metadata such as date, type, author, revision, version, and custom file properties
● “Whereused” reports. Shows where a part is used in other assemblies
● Assembly BOM Views. Display, filter, and export the parts list of any CAD assembly
● Configuration and family table support. View different configurations and families of parts and assemblies from major CAD systems

Many engineering organizations rely on more than one CAD provider, so Workbench is designed to support them all. This “multiCAD” approach is supported by a number of new CAD-specific enhancements:
● SolidWorks. Intelligent notifications alert users of document changes such as when a file is locked or affected by changes to another document
● Creo. Automatically detects the latest Creo file for upload; view native parts, assemblies, and drawings
● Autodesk. Support for 3D DWG

In addition to these new features, GrabCAD has made more than 100 enhancements to existing features over the last six months, including:
● Revision control. Links assembly revision to part revision
● Version control and backup. Restores deleted files or restore to a point in time
● File locking. Lock status now available inside SolidWorks Workbench add-in

Learn more about GrabCAD Workbench by clicking here.

Barb Schmitz

Creo 3.0 Announced at PTC Live Global

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Amid the excitement of users, partners, analysts and members of the press–along with hundreds of Boston-based employees, PTC announces the release of Creo 3.0. Among the most impressive of its enhancements and feature upgrades is what PTC has dubbed Unite Technology.

Designed to help its customers overcome the struggles of dealing with CAD data in multiple formats, Unite Technology provides users with an easier way to use multi-CAD data in Creo. The new release also offers new integrated concept design tools that make it easy and fast to capture concept ideas–both good and bad–for future use and to reuse concept designs in the detailed design process.

Other productivity enhancements within the release will reportedly add to customers’ ability to focus on higher levels of innovation and product quality.

Unite Technology.

Unite technology enables CAD data of varying formats to be used directly in Creo apps, including Creo Parametric, Creo Direct, Creo Simulate, and Creo Options Modeler apps. This ability should go a long ways towards customers gaining efficiencies from consolidating multiple CAD systems onto PTC Creo.

The Unite Technology should also facilitate design collaboration with partners who use competing CAD tools by allowing users to easily reuse existing CAD data as is, in its current format, with no need for a costly upfront migration. It also enables users to convert existing legacy data to PTC Creo easily, on demand, and only when modifications are actually needed.

There is no need to convert entire assemblies to modify individual parts, users simply convert parts as changes are required.

Creo’s Unite Technology makes collaboration easier because it enables design participants to natively open SolidWorks, CATIA and NX files directly in PTC Creo without the need for additional software or any error-prone translation or conversion process. Users can also import SolidWorks, CATIA, NX, Solid Edge and Autodesk Inventor files into Creo without the need for additional software.

This new functionality also enables higher levels of concurrent engineering between the product development teams and suppliers/partners/customers by allowing designers to quickly and easily incorporate native CAD geometry created in other systems earlier in the process, create design intent across CAD formats and, as new versions of the non-PTC Creo data are updated in the assembly, ensure that any design intent build between the original part and the PTC Creo parts are protected when the part is updated.

Unite also helps promote the reuse and sharing of data and eliminates the need to manage many secondary formats, and significantly reduces the need to export data in neutral formats. Data can be shared in customer/supplier’s native format, eliminating the step of using neutral file formats.

The new release of Creo 3.0 will enable customers to work and consolidate data from any CAD source.
The new release of Creo 3.0 will enable customers to work and consolidate data from any CAD source.

New concept design tools

PTC Creo 3.0 has also made some improvements in the area of concept design. These new tools and features include:
* Align Freestyle design functionality (part of PTC Creo Parametric) enables designers to create and drive freeform designs parametrically, combining organic geometry creation and modification with associative parametric design intent.

* Greater scalability and richer tools in PTC Creo Layout to support 2D concept engineering activities with seamless re-use in the 3D parametric environment

*A more powerful and easier-to use 3D direct modeling app (PTC Creo Direct) for quickly creating concept designs that are fully reusable in PTC Creo Parametric

* PTC Creo Design Exploration Extension provides a dedicated environment in PTC Creo Parametric for developing design alternatives, investigating modeling approaches and safely understanding the consequences of design changes.

Other new features include a completely redesigned Help system that uses Google search functionality, integrated hardware libraries, automated fastener assembly workflows, MathCAD integration (shipped free with Creo Parametric), a new 3D Thickness Check for injection-molded products, new analysis tools, photorealistic rendering courtesy of KeyShot, and improvements to the Creo Flexible Modeling Extension and ECAD Collaboration Extension.

We really just scratched the surface of all the new bells and whistles in Creo 3.0. For more information on Creo 3.0, check out this page. Creo 3.0 with Unite Technology will ship mid-July.

Barb Schmitz

Dassault Ships Mechanical Conceptual

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Though it was announced back in January at SolidWorks World, Dassault Systemes today announces that Mechanical Conceptual is now available. The first SolidWorks application on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Mechanical Conceptual has already been hard at work in production environments at numerous customer sites. Touted to be more social and conceptual, the software is expected to greatly facilitate design collaboration among key design contributors through its use of Dassault’s cloud-based capabilities.

Here’s what one of the SolidWorks resellers is saying about the new product. “Now that the majority of the companies we partner with have embraced cloud technologies, GoEngineer has seen a dramatic increase in requests from our customer’s engineering, design, and manufacturing departments for help in leveraging the cloud in their organizations. We are excited to offer them SOLIDWORKS Mechanical Conceptual as a solution that effectively combines the benefits of cloud, integrates the amazing power of social technologies, and addresses the need for some design teams to have preliminary layouts before finalizing their CAD work.” said Brad Hansen, CEO of GoEngineer.

Mechanical Conceptual will help key design participants collaborate on designs early and throughout the design cycle.
Mechanical Conceptual will help key design participants collaborate on designs early and throughout the design cycle.

Working in tandem with the regularly updated SolidWorks 3D mechanical CAD software, SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual allows customers to harness the collective intelligence of the entire design team, customers and the supply chain to capture ideas, leverage existing designs, collaborate and quickly collect feedback. Customers have the ability to purchase what best supports their specific conceptual design process:

* SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual – an instinctive powerful 3D modeling environment with online data storage and social collaboration on Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

* Collaborative Sharing – additional access for non-CAD users (executives, design team leaders, project managers and external collaborators) who need to manage data on the cloud and collaborate without constraints, but do not need to create CAD models.

* Product Design Simulation from SIMULIA – easy-to-use simulation-based guidance during all phases of product design, including the critical conceptual design stage, to improve product performance and reduce cost.

Customers can buy Mechanical Conceptual through SolidWorks’ reseller partners. More information of Mechanical Conceptual can be found here.

Barb Schmitz

News from the 3D Collaboration and Interoperability Congress

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There are only two well-known annual events addressing CAD interoperability in the United States, and only one—the Collaboration and Interoperability Congress (3DCIC)—is open to all comers. It’s a bit surprising, considering how deeply rooted and expensive CAD interoperability problems are.

At 3DCIC, which I’ve attended over the last few days, on the order of 100 people, including vendors and users of CAD and PLM software, came together in Denver, to have frank discussions of the issues they face in interoperability, and the ways they’re dealing with those issues.

What is surprising is the lack of rancor in the discussions. Probably the harshest comment throughout the entire conference, was one that I made (which, people who know me might have predicted), when I pointed out to a panel representing Siemens PLM, Dassault Systems, PTC, and Autodesk that their companies are too hard to work with when it comes to their customers getting the answers they need to get their work done better. None of them seemed to take my comment as anything more than what it was—an observation that they could all do better in serving their customers.

One of the consistent threads throughout 3DCIC has been the move towards, and benefits of, model based development (MBD), and the model based enterprise (MBE.)  The two concepts, MBD and MBE, are closely related, and the terms are pretty much used interchangeably.  In its simplest form, MBD is about doing away with 2D drawings.  I’ll be writing more about the subject shortly, as I go through my notes from the congress.

Another strong thread has been 3D PDF.  I think the real charm of 3D PDF is that anybody who has a recent version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader on their computer (and that’s most people) can view these files.  No extra software required to use it.  That’s of great value to organizations, such as the US Department of Defense, where employees are not allowed to install new software (including viewers) on their computer.

I’m now attending a meeting of the 3D PDF Consortium, which was scheduled after the end of 3DCIC..  It was scheduled to have ab0ut 15 attendees;  It’s a full room, with 47 people, including a bunch of folks who are involved in creating ISO standards.

I’ll be writing more about 3D PDF in the near future, but here’s a quick summary about why 3D PDF is important, and a good choice as a neutral format:

  • Universal access: Through Acrobat Reader.
  • Compound document,: 3D, 2D, text, image, audio, and video.
  • Infrastructure availability: Existing systems already support PDF.
  • True neutrality: Protects investment.
  • Superior value: No other platform presents as much opportunity, for such little risk.