Improving Product Quality

By barb schmitz | Published: June 29, 2011

 

Product development engineers and designers are human, and as we all know, to err is human, right? Unfortunately in the increasingly competitive world of product design, making errors in the design of a new product can cost a company plenty in the form of costly reworks, expensive recalls, lost development time, lost revenue and possibly customers, if bad products make their way to market. Increased liability and warranty costs add to the pressure manufacturers face to reduce errors.

One way to head off potential problems is to shift design verification and validation methods from the end of the design process to the beginning of development, when errors are fixed with the least expense and effort. At this point, designs still reside in digital form so they are easily changeable and should be iterated continuously to assure the design is fully optimized. After all, design validation is most useful when there is time in the development cycle to integrate the results back into the design.

Sometimes this is difficult to do, however, because performing a complete design validation is a detailed, methodical, and time-consuming task. The key is to use design methodologies and tools that focus on ‘what if’ type analysis early in the design cycle, without derailing development schedules. Design verification and validation are both crucial steps in ensuring that a new product will ultimately meet, or possibly exceed, customers’ needs and expectations.

Integrating verification and validation early in the design cycle delivers significant returns: improved product quality, reduced prototyping costs, and shortened design cycles. Design verification assures that products fulfill the requirements specified for them, while validation confirms that a product will fulfill its intended use or purpose. In other words, verification assures that the product was built correctly, while validation assures that the manufacturer built the right product.

Both processes—verification and validation—provide periodic confirmation that the design is headed in the right direction, reducing the chance of designs making a wrong turn, in terms of meeting design requirements and specifications, which could lead to further errors down the line when changes come at a much higher cost, both in terms of time and money.  Verification and validation provide engineers with a variety of possible feedback or output that they can incorporate back into the design. This feedback might include whether or not the design met requirements or specifications; descriptions of failure modes; summarized test results; and recommendations for improvement.

The first step is to determine the means by which the requirements will be validated. For some manufacturers, especially those who manufacture electromechanical products, this step will involve identifying the testing required for mechanical, electrical, and embedded software as well as the system as a whole. Testing facilities and resources must then be secured, and physical tests run or digital models developed and simulations run.

Design requirements are translated into a set of test cases with loads and constraints that can either be measured physically or digitally across all functional domains (electrical, mechanical, and software). Once the tests and simulations are run, the results of both the physical or digital tests are documented in reports, indicating whether the product satisfied both its requirements and specifications.

Implementing verification and validation techniques—either digitally or physically—early in the design process enables engineers to ask the “what if” questions when the answers bear the most fruit. Having the answers to all those questions empowers engineers to make the best decisions that guide designs in the right direction from the start and ultimately result in better, higher-quality products.

What a Concept: The Importance of the Early Phase of Design

By barb schmitz | Published: August 5, 2011

The preliminary stage of any new product development project is the conceptual design phase. During this early stage, engineers and designers rapidly explore and refine ideas by engaging in free-flowing, collaborative brainstorming sessions, during which a wide range of designs—in the form of sketches, 2D drawings and layouts, and 3D models and renderings—are considered and evaluated until a final concept design is collectively chosen.

During this time, ideas might be sketched roughly on white boards or on paper. A recent study entitled, Trends in Concept Design, conducted by PTC, illustrates the methods by which concept designs or ideas are captured. According to the survey, the largest percentage of the survey’s 214 participants (27%) indicated that concept designs are captured electronically in the form of 3D data, however following closely another 21% of participants indicated that concepts were more often shared via hand-drawn sketches on paper.

Regardless of how the ideas are captured, the concept phase of design is the time to assemble a company’s brightest minds to generate ideas, which in turn, are evaluated, mutated, blended and reincarnated. The most innovative ideas are generated by iterating back and forth between by multiple sources, filtering them through each participant’s various perspectives until a proposed design is agreed upon.

Carefully identifying the final product’s requirements (design intent) is extremely important at this stage, as it will serve as the sieve through which product ideas must be funneled through to assure the product will meet its objectives. As ideas are evaluated, they must be analyzed for adherence to goals and requirements. Companies must also realistically assess their current technology and whether it is sufficient to accomplish the design and manufacture of the proposed product.

Another reason why the concept stage is a critically important phase of new product design is because this is when of the majority of the total development costs is committed. According to the American Association of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), nearly 75% of the manufacturing cost of a typical product is committed by the end of the conceptual phase, meaning that only 25% of a product’s cost can be influenced by decisions made after this time.

The PTC survey, which was conducted in July 2011, backs this statistic, with results showing that 61% of participants saying that 61% of a product’s total development costs are fully committed at this stage of design. Another 43% say that 71% of the total product cost is fixed by the time they exit the conceptual design phase. As a result, if decisions made during this early phase of design are bad, manufacturers stand to lose much of the money that was committed before production even starts.

Good Concepts Take Time

One common mistake manufacturers make is focusing in on one concept design too early and rushing to get designs into the detailed design stage, often due to outside pressures from management and sales and marketing personnel.  According to the PTC survey, 67% participants indicated that they spend less than 30% of their total product development time on the conceptual design stage.

The result is often bad design decisions that carry hefty downstream costs when design issues arise during latter stages. In order to prevent such disasters, manufacturers need to really take their time during this crucial phase and afford their designers the sufficient time to evaluate multiple ideas and designs.

According to the PTC survey, 71% of respondents said that they explore and evaluate between two and five concept designs before moving to the detailed design phase of development. Of that group, nearly half (49%) explore only two or three concept designs. While there is no magic number of concept models that should be evaluated prior to moving proposed designs forward, designers should have the tools and the time to evaluate as many designs as possible.

Global Shortage of Engineers Presents Challenges to Industry

By barb schmitz | Published: April 28, 2011

While many countries are grappling with high unemployment numbers, tech companies in Silicon Valley and other high-tech regions are waging wars with each other, fighting over talent. Prospects are being lured away from jobs, being offered perks such as iPads, stock options, and the opportunity to bring their dogs to work. The shortage of qualified engineers has grown significantly in the past six months, according to tech execs and recruiters, as venture capitalists begins pumping money back into market. In tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, Austin, New York, and Seattle, start-ups are once again booming and now in competition for the same pool of talent as more established companies.

In the U.S., hiring demands for all types of engineering jobs are on the rise again, 68% higher than at the recessionary low point, according to Wanted Analytics, a provider of business intelligence to the recruitment industry. The current demand is highest in manufacturing, driven primarily by the heavy-truck manufacturing, semiconductor, pharmaceutical, medical device, and aircraft manufacturing sectors. In Detroit, over 2,217 engineering jobs have been posted in the last 60 days.

Global Demand Increases

It’s not just the U.S. that’s suffering from a critical shortage of engineers. Many countries are experiencing a decline in the number of young people, especially women, studying engineering, and it’s causing great concerns for economies hoping to recover from global recession.

In the U.K, several industries are struggling with a shortage of engineering talent, including the aerospace, manufacturing and power generation industries. “Businesses cannot grow because of a shortage of trained workers,” says Vince Cable, British Business Secretary. “The pool of unemployed graduates is growing while there is a chronic shortage of science graduates and especially engineers.”

For centuries, Germany led the world in technological prowess. Today, however, young Germans have turned away from engineering. Ten years ago, there were twice as many engineering students at universities in Germany than today, according to the German Association of Engineers. According to the German Institute of Economic, there is a current need for 117,000 engineers, scientists, IT experts and technicians, causing grave concerns for German companies hoping to take advantage of the economic recovery.

Alarmed at what this shortage could mean in terms of global business initiatives, the country as now launched a nationwide publicity campaign encouraging young students to consider careers in engineers. “The lack of engineers is Germany’s number-one hindrance to innovation,” says Markus Roeser of Do Things, a coalition of 80 businesses, universities, and research institutes created to fill the engineering gap. “At stake is to keep Germany’s creative potential.”

Why Women are Still the Minority in Engineering

Many countries have undertaken similar campaigns to encourage women to study engineering. Over the period of 1980 to 1990, the proportion of women entering engineering careers ranged from anywhere from 10 to 20%. By 2000, however, that proportion was declining, and today the percentage of engineers who are female is less than 10%.

A recent study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that women were more likely to quit engineering jobs because of uncomfortable working environments than for family reasons. Nearly half of the women surveyed sited working conditions and issues such as a lack of career advancement and low salary as reasons behind leaving engineering jobs. One-third of the women surveyed who did not enter engineering after graduation did so because of their perceptions of the field being inflexible or the workplace culture as being non-supportive of women.

Recalling Retired Engineers

With a smaller number of engineering students at universities globally, some organizations and governments are reaching out to retirees for help. In South Africa, a recent Department of Public Works’ campaign is attempting to recall retired qualified construction engineers to help with skills training.

“This is a necessary move that could not have come sooner. It demonstrates a pragmatic and sensible approach on the part of our government to address the current skills shortage in engineering,” says Tess Marshall, managing director of engineering recruitment at Network Recruitment. “Our research revealed that the average age of professionals in the industry today was 50-55 years and though the new generation was qualified, it wasn’t necessarily experienced.”

Overcoming the Challenges of Globalized Product Development

By Geoff Hedges | Published: May 11, 2011

 

Product development has transitioned to a global endeavor for many industries with products being increasingly broken down into parts, each created in multiple centers around the globe, then brought back together for integration and testing. This transition has vastly changed the landscape for manufacturers who must maintain cohesive, unified operations that continue to drive growth and innovation in order to compete in today’s brutally competitive markets.

Product development in nearly every industry is now a globally collaborative activity with skilled engineering teams dispersed geographically developing products in a collaborative manner. Factors driving this trend include: growing competitive pressures, the availability of strong talent overseas, better digital collaboration and communication tools, and emergence of new growing markets overseas.

Global manufacturers must develop and implement best practices that enable them to deploy coordinated product development strategies that must span timelines, language barriers and global borders. The touted benefits of globalized product development include greater engineering efficiency as a result of lower-cost resources; access to international technical expertise; new global markets for products; and more flexible resource allocation through outsourcing. Transitioning existing processes and practices, however, leads to a host of strategic and tactical issues that companies must overcome before successfully deploying globalized product development (GPD). Let’s take a look at a few of these issues:

Intellectual property (IP). Sharing valuable product data, designs and technologies outside the company makes protecting IP more challenging. Companies must define products and processes in a modular structure to help protect IP.

Process methodology. Companies must develop a methodology to delegate tasks to different global centers. When a remote location is involved in work that is part of a larger task, there must be a process in place that breaks down the task into clear steps, determines what steps are done by each center, then reconfigures the process to enable the necessary handoffs, reviews and approvals.

Product modularity. Often complete subsystems or components are outsourced to design teams at another location. Modular product architectures can facilitate the global coordination of these products. Clearly defined interfaces between modules facilitate their separate development and eventual integration into the final product.

Data integrity. Data in a global organization must be distributed between multiple, often geographically dispersed locations. When each location uses their own unique tools and databases, data availability, accessibility, and auditability all become key issues. In order to maintain data integrity throughout the global organization, best practices for both data and file management must be established. In addition, one design system or database must be recognized as the parent system and all users need to understand the impact of changes they make to the source data.

Organizational change management. Some of the most challenging issues in GPD are those involving individuals’ roles, behaviors and the new skills required of them. Careful planning, training and education should all be allocated for those individuals who will play critical roles in making GPD work.

Overcoming the Challenges

The transition to GPD must incorporate new ways to collaborate among teams and individuals across times zones, languages, cultures and companies, and these differences must be taken into account from the outset. Manufacturers must take a systematic approach that addresses all three major components of GPD: process, people, and technology.

A key enabler to success in GPD seems to hinge on standardization, in both tools and processes. Design teams in lower-cost regions might not have the expertise on or access to the same level of high-end design tools used in the U.S. and other high-cost regions. Key management must be able to establish standardized product development tools with which new products are designed as well as standardized and documented processes. Standardizing processes and tools from the outset of GPD efforts helps drive compliance and effective methodology.

Product lifecycle management (PLM) systems can help manufacturers establish open and secure digital environments for product development that protects IP and enables all distributed design teams to access the most up-to-date design data. PLM systems also enable manufacturers to keep track of all of the processes and tasks—regardless of what group is doing them or where they are—at each state of the product development cycle as well as tracking and managing engineering changes so everyone can see the impact of changes. With the right standardized tools and processes in place, manufacturers can drive greater efficiencies, growth and innovation through successful GPD.

Is your company involved with GPD and if so,

what are some of the challenges it faces?

Inventors Digest: FIRST Team Seeks Patent/ Kamen’s Kids

By Admin | Published: July 15, 2011

 

“This year we’ve learned to use a milling machine and Creo, CAD software from PTC,” says Sean Lanier. “I entered in some of the side panels for our robot and used the machine to cut them out. Marc (Celestini) used a wizard on the machine to etch the team number into the side panel.” “Our goal is to create lifelong interest in science and engineering for students,” says Robin Saitz, senior vice president of solutions marketing and communications at PTC and a FIRST executive sponsor.”

 

Read the full article

Accelerating Innovation in Product Design

By barb schmitz | Published: July 13, 2011

 

Manufacturers know that innovation is the key enabler to designing and building new products that will ultimately succeed in the market. Innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy, especially when it leads to new product categories and increasing productivity. What, however, constitutes innovation when it comes to new product development? Can product development teams really promise innovation in their products or are most new products simply improved variations of existing products?

 

For many manufacturing companies, innovation typically begins in R&D. Ideas spun out of R&D need to obtain buy-in from management, who must determine and prioritize which ideas product development teams should pursue. Senior management must focus on setting the direction for innovative product development by identifying the criteria by which opportunities are assessed and by committing resources to pursue opportunities that fulfill those criteria.

Many companies begin the innovation process by asking questions such as: will this product meet an unmet customer need at a price point that makes sense? The answer to that question will identify what innovations might have market appeal. Another question to ask is does this product fit with our current technology, brand, manufacturing processes?

Opening up the innovation process

Large organizations tend to funnel new development projects forward through stage gates, often stymieing creativity in the process. A new way to generate ideas is through “open innovation,” a term coined by Henry Chesbrough, a professor at the University of California, Berkley. Open innovation refers to the inflows and outflows of knowledge used to accelerate internal innovation.

The central idea behind open innovation is that in a world of widely distributed knowledge, companies cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research, but should develop a strategy to seek out ideas from both inside and outside their corporate walls. This might mean buying or licensing processes or inventions (e.g., patents) from other companies. Open innovation, therefore, is the antithesis of the way traditional R&D departments work.

Many innovative product development programs fail, not as a result of engineering challenges, but because of organizational failures. From an organizational standpoint, companies need to assign a strong executive sponsor to be engaged in the innovation strategy and make sure there is an established set of tools, processes, techniques and training in place to transition ideas into the developmental pipeline. In addition, manufacturers need to develop a clear set of selection and filtering criteria to weed out bad ideas and narrow in on good ideas.

Opening up the innovation process enables companies to generate new product ideas more quickly using both internal and external resources and identify global trends faster. Manufacturers must learn to treat innovation and idea management as a true business discipline and strategy for growth.

Avoiding “Not Invented Here” (NIH) Bias

Expanding upon Chesbrough’s concept of open innovation is the “Not Invented Here” syndrome, a term used to describe persistent corporate or institutional culture that avoids using or buying already existing products, research or knowledge because of its external origins. In manufacturing, this amounts to rejecting a potential solution—or new product idea—based on the fact that it was not developed internally.

The prevailing symptom of NIH is rash of re-inventing wheels, bringing along with it lost time and money, along with the corresponding loss of opportunity.  The reality is that many organizations have created successful new products by taking an existing idea or concept and applying it in a novel way or improving upon it. Leaders that embrace true innovation seek the best ideas from both inside and outside corporate walls.

In the light of globalization and a wide range of innovative ideas, the NIH bias should be reconsidered.  High-level management should work to change this type of corporate culture in order to encourage cooperation between partners and foster innovation. “Not all the smart people work for you,” says Chesbrough. “By leveraging the discoveries of others, companies can produce spectacular results.”

Enabling customers to have a voice

Customers—hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of them—are using your company’s product every day, making them well-positioned to suggest future product features and enhancements. Many manufacturers are giving their customers a voice in the future development of their products.

The key to successfully incorporating customer feedback into the innovation process is to ask questions that will elicit a response that proposes a challenge that can generate real solutions instead of disjointed ideas or suggestions with no path toward implementation.  Social media sites have made it easier than ever for organizations to have an open forum through which customer can share their opinions, complaints and questions on current and future products.

Engaging and integrating customers’ feedback on products should be a vital part of a company’s product innovation strategy. Integrating the customer’s opinions into the design process shortens the development time spent on rework. Customer adoption and satisfaction are accelerated because the customer’s voice is integrated into the overall design.