Novedge Pulse™ of Barb Schmitz

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 [… [more...]

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 [...] > Read mor [more...]

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, [...] > Read mor [more...]

The rate of change and advancement in the electronics industry has been at a breakneck pace over the past few decades.   The names of the leading electronics manufacturers today were new market entrants just ten years ago. To survive, manufacturers must be nimble and quick to overcome obstacles such as shrinking operating margins, an increasingly [...] > Read mor [more...]

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 [… [more...]

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 [...] > Read mor [more...]

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 [...] > Read mor [more...]

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 [...] > Read mor [more...]

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 [...] > Read mor [more...]

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 [...] > Read mor [more...]

As global economies struggle to regain their financial footing following years of economic turmoil, many companies worldwide are dealing with a shortage of qualified engineers to fill positions necessary to win the big contracts that can get their businesses back on track. Government leaders are concerned too, as they recognize that economic success in today’s [...] > Read mor [more...]

Sustainable product design, also referred to as green design, can be loosely defined as a set of objectives to reduce the use of nonrenewable resources, both in the manufacturing process and in the finished product itself. It embraces a wider view of product development, looking at the full lifecycle of the product and the impact [...] > Read mor [more...]

What happens when a specialized, expensive piece of machinery breaks and you don’t have the original drawings or models of the product in order to diagnose the problem or fix it? Or what happens when you need to create new molds, models or parts for an older piece of machinery and you don’t have any [...] > Read mor [more...]

Full-blown mobile CAD might not be quite ready for prime time, but there are plenty of mobile apps out there that are being used today to improve engineering workflows. After all, engineering, and product development specifically, entail more than just creating CAD models. There’s concept development, design collaboration, data management, bidding, supplier sourcing, and on-site [...] > Read mor [more...]

Despite significant advancements in digital prototyping that digitally simulate products to validate form, fit and function, eventually physical models must be built. These 3D models enable designers to verify that the product will function as intended and meet the needs of the customer before committing to costly production runs. Creating these physical prototypes used to [...] > Read mor [more...]

Design optimization is the use of simulation and analysis techniques to optimize product designs. Nearly all CAD and simulation vendors are hard at work developing automated solutions—or improving upon current solutions—to facilitate this endeavor and distinguish their solutions from those of their competitors. The goal of design optimization efforts is often to reduce the weight [...] > Read mor [more...]

Manufacturers today face a daunting reality. Increased global competition seems to be popping up everywhere, customers are increasingly finicky, and products must be designed faster—and at less cost—than ever before. Improving product development processes through the deployment of innovative design technologies may be what sets them apart, and hopefully ahead, of their competition. One of [...] > Read mor [more...]

The dynamics of product development have changed significantly over the past decade. Previously those tasked with product development initiatives worked in their respective silos until their respective piece of the project was completed, then it was passed to the next group. Engineers would come up with concept ideas, determine if these ideas would meet design [...] > Read mor [more...]

In the ongoing attempt to stay ahead of the rising tide of global competition, manufacturers continue to try to reduce time to market for new products. After all, even the most innovative new product will fail if it doesn’t beat out its competition in the product development race. Winners of this elusive race can take [...] > Read mor [more...]

With gloomy headlines spanning the globe warning of political unrest and collapsing economies, it would be easy to take on a pessimistic view of the year ahead. If you look a bit closer, however, the picture for 2013 doesn’t look quite so bleak. There are reasons to be optimistic as 2013 will offer manufacturers globally [...] > Read mor [more...]

Bringing innovative products to market ahead of your competitors provides a sizeable opportunity for manufacturers to increase profitability. Doing so, however, requires them to optimize product development processes. Though making changes to designs, as they process through the development cycle is a necessity, engineering change management has become a significant bottleneck in the process. According [more...]

Products are increasingly more complex. More products are made up of complex systems of interconnected software, electrical and mechanical components. Often software is also incorporated into these products to enhance functionality. While embedded software does enable products to do more in terms of functionality, it also adds significant complexity to its design. According to a [more...]

Mobile devices, applications and big data companies can actually use for strategic advantages are among the top tech trends the Gartner Inc. believes will have the most impact on organizations as they head into the new year. Analysts at Gartner compile the Top 10 Technology Trends for 2013 annually to identify the issues that will [more...]

One of the biggest challenges today for manufacturers is how to manage the flow of product data throughout today’s extensive design supply chains. They are finding it increasingly challenging to make effective product-related decisions due to expanded technical complexities and ever-expanding supply chains that greatly increase the number of people with a stake in the [more...]

“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick” and so should today’s manufacturers. In order to survive in today’s fast-moving, globally competitive world, manufacturers must be agile and highly responsive to rapid market changes, changes in a supplier network, or any other type of change in product requirements. Their product development process must also be nimble, flexible [more...]

The process of product development has changed significantly since the advent of modern parametric, feature-based 3D CAD software. Today, the 3D model has become an enriched gem of IP filled with intelligence that is tapped by nearly everyone involved in the creation, manufacture and support of today’s products. That 3D model is also leveraged continuously [more...]

The reality of the world today is that people are almost never completely unplugged. Thanks to an onslaught of free or low-cost mobile apps and the growing prevalence of smartphones and tablets, people can do literally anything from anywhere. That trend is naturally migrating to the work world as well. Nearly all the major CAD [more...]

Increasing productivity through streamlined product development is what sets apart successful product manufacturers from their competitors and what enables them to deliver innovative products to market faster. One of the critical capabilities of these market “winners” is the ability to efficiently juggle CAD data in multiple formats, a reality born out of increasingly dispersed design [more...]

Creating innovative new products is what keeps organizations alive and profitable in today’s brutally competitive global markets. The ability of a manufacturer to develop successful, innovative products often hinges on how well it fosters, fleshes out and evolves new ideas and concepts into new products. Organizations that afford their designers and engineer the luxury of [more...]

The consumer market has experienced a virtual flood of cheap, easy-to-use “apps” that enable users to do everything from remotely program their TVs, check their bank balance, map out a route, order concert tickets, see what’s playing at the local Cineplex, play a game, or thousands of other things. This onslaught of easily accessible and [more...]

When used properly and at the earliest stages of design, CAE tools enable engineers to understand, predict, and improve product performance digitally. CAE software also enables the design team to explore more design concepts, cut costs associated with traditional physical prototypes and make faster, more informed decisions as designs progress through the design cycle. When [more...]

As today’s products become more and more complex—from both a design and functionality standpoint—the accompanying highly detailed product models become very complicated as well. These models are often composed of extremely large assemblies that add great complexity to the design process. Fortunately there are advances, both on the software and hardware sides, that are helping [more...]

Product lifecycle management (PLM) software systems are not simply one piece of software, but a means by which enterprises can connect their various parts and functions (concept, detailed design, manufacturing, marketing, etc.) into one cohesive system. PLM is about connecting and sharing a company’s intellectual property throughout a product’s lifecycle, from concept until a product [more...]