How can your company reduce the design cycle, avoid market delays, and land better quality products in the hands of customers, faster? What strategies can ensure your products meet regulatory standards while also grabbing more market share before the competition? Let’s discuss the pressing questions at the forefront for manufacturing leaders seeking to dominate in their industry.
The agility to bring new products to market swiftly hinges on the seamless collaboration of product development teams. And the backbone of product development and testing is robust data management. From traditional 2D/3D designs to advanced generative modeling, simulations, and comprehensive digital twins, the key to success lies in a well-structured data and workflows. A quick example of efficient data reuse and collaboration is Cactus Varied Industries, who leverages their custom parts library within Autodesk Inventor, streamlining their design process and achieving a 33% reduction in drafting time.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) takes engineering data management to the enterprise. PLM acts as the cornerstone for enhancing teamwork by centralizing information and automating routine processes across multiple departments increasing the efficiency of the product development process. This harmonization of workflows fosters effective team communication, minimizes errors, and accelerates decision-making for the best speed to market ensuring you meet the market demand. As a result, it catalyzes the delivery of new product iterations, modifications, and groundbreaking innovations to the marketplace with unprecedented speed. The Technical Manager of Design at ME Elecmetal, Michael Best, shares the results of putting the power of PLM at the core of their operations. “We can help our customers get to market a lot faster while at the same time optimizing our engineering processes and deliverables.”
Quick market entry is crucial to reach customer demand, so lengthy design cycles that require building from the ground up can significantly delay new market entry and impact a company’s bottom line. Design automation is becoming a decisive factor for efficiency, empowering engineering teams to rapidly meet product specifications with precision, offering completed designs in a fraction of the usual time.
At Nucor Warehouse Systems, for example, design automation has drastically reduced quote times and broadened team participation in the design process, allowing even those with less expertise to contribute effectively. Similarly, Superior Tank Company, Inc. has seen a reduction in design time of their tanks by one to two days, showcasing how automated workflows can significantly accelerate product readiness.
Automated workflows enable products to be assembled, tested, and ready for sale much faster, transforming the traditional, drawn-out design process into a streamlined operation. This strategic integration of automation not only caters to the growing demand for customization but also carves a competitive advantage by shrinking the journey from initial concept to market-ready product for a significant competitive advantage to reach potential customers faster. It’s a dynamic shift that not only satisfies customer needs but also enhances a company’s market position through rapid and agile response capabilities.
In the manufacturing sector, modular design has emerged as a critical strategy to enhance agility and reduce time-to-market.
The traditional approach of starting from scratch for every new product design is not only resource-intensive, but also a drain on worker creativity. Forward-thinking companies like Idaho Steel are leading the charge by leveraging modular design principles, allowing them to assemble new products and variations rapidly by reusing existing, vetted designs, leading to a faster product lifecycle for a better customer experience. This shift has not only streamlined their design process but adding automation has also enabled them to cut validation times by 75%.
By integrating a design library that serves as a repository for technical documents and proven designs, companies can foster better collaboration among their teams. Cleaver-Brooks utilizes a collection of templated designs to cover a vast majority of their product portfolio, demonstrating the scalability of modular design. Similarly, TOMRA Fresh Foods | Compac has capitalized on a library of 3D components to quickly deliver custom layouts to clients, highlighting how modular design can meet specific customer needs with speed and precision.
To lock up a market, you have to be first. Manufacturers can’t afford the delays of traditional design cycles weighed down with prototype testing and waiting for market feedback. The need for rapid innovation demands quicker, more efficient testing methods.
Expedited testing through design simulation has become a game-changer, providing immediate insights and significantly shortening product iteration cycles. This shift not only streamlines the path to product launch but also safeguards customer satisfaction and loyalty, as emphasized by Gabe Hill from IDEX Health & Science. By proactively addressing potential issues via simulation, IDEX condenses several months of review into just one month, lending to a quicker transition to full-scale production to help them maintain their competitive edge and customer trust.
How deep is the concern for manufacturers in navigating the complex terrain of regulatory compliance? More than 63% of companies report spending more than 2,000 hours per year complying with federal regulations. That’s an incredible investment to adhere to (often required) safety, environmental, and performance standards.
The traditional route to compliance is often mired in costly and time-intensive practices. However, innovative methodologies like simulation, validation, and digital twins are now streamlining this intricate process. Through such simulations, engineers can pre-emptively confirm that designs and virtualize test results to meet all necessary regulatory benchmarks, significantly reducing the need for lengthy approvals and multiple physical prototypes.
Leveraging simulation and validation conserves resources and dramatically accelerates the product development cycle. A prime example is Medtronic’s application of in Silico trials, which reduced their patient cohort by 256, saved an estimated $10 million, and halved the enrollment period, allowing them to bring life-saving medical devices to market sooner.
Accelerating the journey from prototype to full-scale production is the most pivotal aspect in getting to market sooner. When engineers can preemptively identify and resolve design issues, enhance performance, ensure the product market fit, and minimize the need for multiple prototypes, it significantly trims the development cycle and ultimately the time-to-market.
In terms of product durability, early flaw detection is crucial. LaunchPoint EPS aviation engineers leverage these advanced simulations to uncover potential weaknesses that might otherwise go unnoticed until late physical testing stages—saving both time and resources, and ensuring the design’s longevity and durability for their electric motors.
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Streamlined product configuration and sales are pivotal for manufacturers aiming to quickly capture and expand their market share. Such systems refine the sales strategy, trimming down the time it takes to produce quotes, while also offering custom-tailored solutions to meet customer demand effectively. This not only streamlines the process but significantly enhances customer satisfaction. Cleaver-Brooks exemplifies this approach by utilizing a versatile design library that allows for rapid customization of a vast majority of their innovative product offerings, demonstrating how flexibility in design can lead to increased agility in commerce.
For customers, easy and flexible product customization is not just a preference but a growing expectation. The agility to adapt sales, design, and manufacturing processes to be able to respond to these customer requests are becoming vital.
Automated sales configuration systems are the linchpin in this adaptive mechanism, enabling companies to respond rapidly to bespoke customer demands. Configuration, pricing and quoting (CPQ) automation drastically cuts down customer wait times, and load on your internal teams. These systems allow for rapid adaptation of sales, design, and manufacturing processes, ensuring that the demand for personalized products is met with both speed and precision. It’s a transformation experienced by Siemens, where their quoting process was reduced from two months to a mere five minutes with CPQ [Source: Tacton].
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