PTC will be talking a lot more about Creo 2.0 in the very near future. For now, what I can say is this: It looks good so far.”
Read more about what Evan Yares has to say after his visit to PTC’s corporate headquarters in the full article.
viernes, 30 de marzo de 2012
Innovation Gains Steam in China
Few would argue that China has become the world’s leader in manufacturing, due largely to its lower labor wages and enormous pool of workers. That’s only one side of the manufacturing dominance equation, however. Due in part to a corporate culture steeped in tradition and hierarchy, China has been sorely lacking in innovation. This, however, might be changing, according to a recent McKinsey & Company report, “A CEO’s guide to innovation in China.”
Evidence of increased innovation includes a doubling of the global percentage of patents granted to Chinese inventors since 2005 and the growing role of Chinese companies in emerging wind-and solar-power industries. China is now also the world’s second-largest venture capital (VC) market, rising to $7.6 billion from $2.2 billion in 2005, while the American VC market has remained largely stagnant, according to Rebecca A. Fannin, author of “Startup Asia.”
The Chinese have traditionally focused on innovation through commercialization, being more comfortable than many of their Western counterparts to put out a new product or service quickly, then improving its performance through subsequent iterations. In China, it’s common for products to come to market in a fraction of the time it requires manufacturers in more developed markets. Though the quality of these initial releases is variable, subsequent ones improve quickly.
Chinese companies have greatly benefitted from their government’s emphasis on indigenous innovation, which it views as critical, both to the domestic economy’s long-term health and to the global competitiveness of Chinese companies. China has created innovation hubs to spur development in key growth industries such as life sciences, biotech, and semiconductors. Similar strides are being made in the communications and pharmaceutical industries.
China tackles emerging energy markets
China has made big gains in the business-to-business (B2B) sectors, such as communications equipment and pharmaceuticals. Other emerging markets are alternative energy, both solar and wind power. China will become the world’s largest market forrenewable-energy technology, and it already has some of the sector’s biggest companies, providing critical components for the industry globally. Not only does the country enjoy scale advantages, but also uses new homegrown manufacturing techniques that improve the efficiency of solar panels.
Success in B2B innovation is due in part to government policies, such as establishing market access barriers; influencing the nature of cross-border collaborations by setting IP requirements for electric vehicles, high-speed trains, and other segments; and creating domestic-purchasing policies that favor Chinese-made goods and services. The Chinese government, after all, owns most of the companies in China.
Corporate culture still risk-adverse
One of the challenges that remain is the fact that the traditional Chinese corporate culture does not support risk taking, an essential part of innovation. Internal collaboration and brainstorming—essential to developing new ideas—are all but absent from their corporate culture. Also lacking are advanced techniques for understanding what customers really want.
Let’s tackle the first one. Failure is a required element in innovation, but one shunned in China where a culture of obedience and adherence to rules prevails at most companies. One exception is a leading solar company that now transfers risk from individual innovators to teams. Shared accountability and community support made increased risk taking and experimentation safer. The company has used these “innovation work groups” to develop everything from more efficient battery technology to new manufacturing processes.
Fostering collaboration
Chinese companies are also lagging in promoting a culture of collaboration and the internal generation of ideas, which can develop into new insights, innovative new products, and business opportunities. In most Chinese companies, traditional organizational and cultural barriers prevent such exchanges of ideas.
The emphasis continues to be on competence in delivering products in large volumes rapidly. The country’s rigorous, linear processes for bringing products to market ensure rapid commercialization but create too many hand-offs where insights are lost and trade-offs for efficiency are promoted.
The Consumerization of CAD
Last week, Apple hit a huge milestone, announcing that it had reached 25 billion downloads off its App Store web site. While the term “app” probably wasn’t even considered a word a few years ago, today they are everywhere and they do quite literally everything. Thanks in part to the staggering popularity of Apple’siPhone and iPad, along with a host of lookalike mobile devices swarming the market, developers have raced to create lightweight, easy-to-use programs.
Advances in usability and cost-effective pricing models have helped create an entirely new market for software, and software developers in nearly every market have created a virtual flood of apps that meet the needs of nearly every market. Users, in turn, are now demanding that same ease of use and functionality that is offered in consumer apps in their work software.
The widespread adoption of these mobile devices and the prevalence of Internet connectivity have also contributed to the popularity of apps. All these factors have created a more blended IT environment, one in which software for work and personal use are used somewhat interchangeably. Workers now demand 24/7 access to corporate email and documents, which can lead to greater productivity and flexibility and improved efficiency.
So what does all this whoopla mean for the CAD industry? Well, for one it’s created a new revenue stream for vendors still reeling from recessionary cutbacks that have affected their bottom lines. With the introduction of smaller, consumer-like apps, CAD vendors can add high-volume, lower-priced offerings to their product lines. These apps also offer a way for vendors to offer boutique services to their valued subscription customers, according to the recently released 2012 CAD Report by Jon Peddie.
What about CAD users? Designers and engineers will eventually expect the same level of usability from their design tools as they do from the other apps they run on their smartphones and tablets. They want easy, intuitive user interfaces. They want portability. And, they don’t want to spend a lot for these bite-size programs. Vendors might need to eventually need to rethink traditional licensing agreements, as users may eventually demand instant accessibility to apps via online downloads.
There are certainly signs that the CAD industry is paying attention to this trend. While these apps won’t replace the functionality of full-fledged CAD applications anytime soon, they can be viewed as mobile extensions of the CAD platform, providing additional functionality, such as remote collaboration capabilities.
With the introduction of Creo, PTC has ushered in a new way of thinking when it comes to CAD. Instead of having to buy, implement and learn a huge monolithic CAD application, the company has introduced a family of role-based apps that make it easier to get the right tools in the right user’s hands faster and more efficiently.
Caution: Roadblocks ahead
Somewhere there are IT managers wringing their hands over this trend, sometimes referred to in IT circles as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). As more work-related apps are ported to these mobile devices, how do you safeguard valuable proprietary corporate information from theft, especially given their portability? This is especially true in manufacturing industry whereprotecting IP is always of utmost importance.
Companies are racing to keep pace with this. Though many organizations have policies in place that require the encryption of sensitive data on laptops, fewer companies encrypt data on smaller, mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. More devices mean more operating systems, which in turn means added complexity for IT departments. Concerns about network security breaches, IP theft, and loss of data mean that a strategy for addressing BYOD is imperative.
The bottom line is that some of these consumer-based technologies or “apps” can be used in conjunction with traditional enterprise software to create value in the workplace, though their use must be supported by the appropriate security policies and procedures to safeguard critical business data.
jueves, 29 de marzo de 2012
Creo Customer: Designing Replacements for Human Limbs
In a previous episode of the Product Design Show, Vince and Allison introduced us to College Park, a company that designs prosthetic feet. It took a couple years and about ten talented engineers in Fraser, Michigan to create the first-of-its-kind iPecs Lab.
The iPecs Lab provides design engineers with the empirical data they need to make an artificial limb feel like a true extension of an amputee’s body.
Before the iPecs Lab, College Park engineers used to rely upon the communication of the wearer and the prosthetist to make changes to the foot. But with the wireless iPecs Lab device, the body actually provides the feedback, such as where the forces may be too extreme for the wearer. The device’s load cell is about the size of a cell phone and is placed between the wearer’s socket and the prosthetic. From the information gathered from the device, the engineer makes design adjustments to the foot.
Newer prosthetic foot designs, like the Soleus, rely upon the iPecs Lab technology. The Soleus is designed for medium to high impact use and creates a seamless gait for the wearer. It accomplishes this through a series of springs that start from the back of the foot and end up at the front, a technology called their Integrated Spring Technology (iST). For instance, when a person walks, starting with the heel strike, the back two springs of the prosthesis start to load up. As the foot continues through its gait, it transfers weight from the back spring, to the middle spring, to the front spring. Vince and Allison show a slow-motion view of these intricacies in this episode of the Product Design Show below.
Director of engineering, Mike Leydet, says that he is humbled by what it takes to design a prosthetic foot. “The complexity of the motion of the human body walking through space is incredible. That’s why we needed devices and sensors [like the iPecs Lab] to measure these things.”
The creative genius behind the iPecs Lab, Integrated Spring Technology, and the Soleus foot is homegrown from College Park Industries in Michigan. The technology to bring brilliance into 3D space is from Creo Parametric.
Spanning the Digital Divide: Ways to Leverage Strengths of Digital Natives
The engineering world is poised to experience a sea change of sorts in the upcoming decades as it faces a flood of engineering executive retirements as the boomer population moves on to greener pastures (golf courses). Manufacturing organizations must facilitate knowledge transfer of these seasoned engineering veterans to the younger generation of engineers who will be tasked with leading design initiatives of the future.
Often referred to as Generation Y or “digital natives,” these younger workers, who were born after the advent of digital technology, are a different species in terms of lifestyle and work habits. A lifelong immersion in technology has affected their mindset, behavior, and expectations. As a result, employers will have to adapt their work environments in order to best leverage the unique experiences and strengths these workers bring to the table. They demand fast-track career positioning, greater work-life balance, positive feedback, training and cutting-edge technology.
Organizations who fail to meet these demands will face obstacles when trying to recruit this crop of young workers. These digital natives will require a lot of management, but they are worth the effort. They are high-maintenance, entitled, technologically sophisticated and fickle, but are also potentially the most high-performing generation in decades. What makes them different from previous generations is exactly what makes them ideally suited to the increasingly demanding, diverse, and dispersed global workplace.
The generational differences between this younger generation and older workers, or “digital immigrants,” will inevitably pose challenges. The different styles, values and habits of the different groups can create misunderstandings, misperceptions, conflict, and disharmony and communication breakdowns. Conflict often occurs because of digital natives’ reluctance to accept hierarchy in the workplace and to obey authority without questioning it.
Let’s lay down a few simple rules to follow to best take advantage of these younger engineers who will one day be calling the shots at organizations worldwide.
Ditch the manuals. Digital natives are not going to sit down and read tedious printed employment or training manuals. They want instant access online to information. Take a cue from Agilent Technologies, which distributes Apple iPod Nanos preloaded with information on benefits offered by the company to all new employees hired from U.S. college campuses.
Embrace new tools. Natives will bring blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and other so-called Web 2.0 social networking tools into the workplace that will enable them to collaborate more freely in an enterprise environment. Revamp your training techniques and methods, implementing tools that are more interactive, such as virtual environments and collaborative tools.
Let them find their own way. Specify clear objectives and set limits explicitly so they know the rules and the expected result, but leave it up to them as to how they get there. This gives them space to unfold their creativity and develop a sense of ownership for a task.
Company loyalty no longer exists. These younger workers—who are projected to hold five to seven jobs before retirement—don’t expect lifetime employment from a single company. They are searching for fulfillment and job satisfaction and achieving success that might enable them greater opportunities in the future. Employers must design engaging work that allows workers to make a clear contribution for which they can be individually rewarded.
Be flexible. Find a balance between the traditional approach of 100% presence of workers during work hours to work-related issues with digital natives’ ways of multitasking, task-switching and working intermittently throughout the day, night and week. These skilled, bright, creative digital natives will perform better under circumstances that suit their preferred working style.
Meet them online. Since digital natives spend a lot of time using social networks, companies should begin their recruiting efforts by looking for potential employees there and promoting themselves via on social media outlets.
Practice transparency. Younger workers believe that transparency yields trust. Facilitate external social collaboration with customers, suppliers, and partners via social collaboration tools. Managers must also realize that digital natives are very peer-oriented and thrive in a participatory culture, which can help them harness the creativity, knowledge and capacities of digital natives.
Reward them daily. Show them short-term benefits while maintaining a vision of the big picture. Create a challenging environment that acknowledges everyone’s performance so there are immediate rewards (and penalties) for the output of an employee.
Law down the law on IP. Nearly all members of this younger generation of workers have created a blog, posted photos or profiles online, or uploaded photos or videos to a web site. For this reason, companies must create policies about how employees treat company information, what kinds of intellectual property (IP) need to be protected, and basic guidelines of behavior in regards to creation of online materials.
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