Consumers have traditionally made buying decisions based on whether a product was well designed, useful, affordable, and/or attractive. Today, however, many consumers are weighing in a product’s sustainability—or lack thereof—as well so manufacturers must add the environmental impact of products to their growing list of requirements they must meet. Everyone knows that designing for sustainability […]
Manufacturers have a lot of demands placed upon them today. They must design, build and ship products faster than ever to stay above the rising tide of global competition. They must be innovative, sustainable and design increasingly customized products. They must manage extended supply chains and efficiently collaborate with design partners from whom they are […]
Social media is everywhere, having become a somewhat ubiquitous part of everyday life. Its role, however, has expanded beyond people’s social lives. Today, it plays an increasingly important role in the way people interact with the world, allowing them to more easily share information, collaborate, discuss common interests and build relationships. These relationships can be […]
This week, more than 10,000 students from around the globe travelled to St. Louis, Mo., to put their engineering skills to the test at the annual FIRST®(For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship, held at the Edward Jones Dome. The three-day event, April 24-27, came down to a heart-pounding conclusion Saturday night in […]
Implementing new CAD software is often a process often fraught with stress and anxiety. Questions abound, such as, will there be a significant downtime as a result of training users? Will there be a disruption in current workflows? Will users be as productive on the new system as they were on the previous one? And, […]
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) technology has been around for many years, helping companies by providing a product information backbone that integrates the processes, data, and business systems involved in the product development process. Its benefits have been well documented. They include faster time-to-market, reduced errors, better design efficiency, improved regulatory compliance, higher product quality, decreased […]
While there are certainly compelling and well documented benefits to adopting 3D CAD, there are still a significant number of organizations that are still using and supporting 2D CAD systems. Many of these organizations are successfully implementing a hybrid design environment, employing the best of both 2D and 3D design tools, and they are by […]
For decades now the U.S. companies have moved manufacturing jobs overseas, eroding the country’s dominance in manufacturing that dated back hundreds of years. Recently, in the face of higher transportation and fuel costs, increased wage rates and higher reject rates in developing countries, U.S. companies have rethought this move, bringing back some of their manufacturing […]
Design optimization was an idea first borne in the labs of universities and specialists groups within the aeronautics and automotive industries. Today, however, it has moved from research labs into mainstream product design and engineers and designers are increasingly using simulation tools to guide their design choices. While conventional analysis techniques use a pre-existing product […]
Manufacturers today have many demands placed upon them. They must design innovative, aggressively priced products faster than ever. American and European manufacturers must compete on a somewhat unlevel playing field with manufacturers from low-cost nations that have an abundance of cheap labor and manufacturing resources. And, perhaps most importantly, they must answer to consumers who […]
|
