Increase to Decrease your Engineering Time

There is always talk around the 3D CAD Mechanical software industry about increasing your engineering productivity.  This is not always true because you must always remember the CAD software system is only a tool.  So if you don’t use the tool correctly or the right tool at the right time (Process) you may not see the benefits.  The concepts I have outlined here are generic and really nothing that new but it might help you understand where the increase in productivity can come from.  I truly believe with the new release of Autodesk Inventor Professional 11 having the Dynamic Simulation module the theory outlined below is possible more then ever and each day I see more and more people adapting modified versions of this.  So here you go spend more time on ENGINEERING!!  Tell your boss you need more ENGINEERING time. (Make sure he or she is in a good mood first)  The key part of this is spending more time on engineering not what I call drafting, using CAD, or making changes and fixing errors.  Most of the savings come on the back end of the project. 

The diagram below outlines that in a traditional engineering project there are three different phases.  The first phase is the good true value added engineering that controls just about everything downstream.  Second is the level 1 waste which is ok but not great and this is where you spend time creating drawings and adding hole patterns and etc.  This is a required phase but doesn’t offer as much value add.  Then finally there is the third phase which is when you make changes due to customers late in the game or spend time fixing errors and re-engineering items.  This phase is the level 2 waste and normally very bad.  We are all humans so you can pretty much never get rid of phase three but you do need to minimize it as much as possible.

So what people are doing is spending more time up front on value added engineering by analyzing their designs and building digital mock ups for customer approvals for example.  This time will reduce your phase 3 level 2 waste more then anything and hopefully take a little out of the phase two level 1 waste also.  The next option which may not apply to everyone is to build proven design templates and best practices that can be reused to reduce the repetitive tasks in phase 2 greatly and save some time up front because some items have already been proven.

This is the first post on some of these topics so I will try to add some more meat to some of the theories and ideas in the coming weeks.  Also if you use Autodesk Inventor make sure you check out the new Dynamic Simulation module that works very well with the existing FEA module.

Dan

Comments

[mj ind]

Good points.
Wish our customers would see it this way also.

[fahrrad]

Dies ist ein großer Ort. Ich möchte hier noch einmal.