The race to the marketplace, the drive to distinguish products, and the battle against commoditization continues to keep the design sector on its toes.

"The biggest concern is how to differentiate your products in a saturated market where everything is becoming a commodity," according to Ping Fu, president and CEO, Raindrop Geomagic. "Customers have an increasing desire for products that match their taste, style, and physical shape. The ability to differentiate will make or break design-oriented businesses." Mass customization is the future, she believes, and industry must be ready to meet this demand. (For more, click here.)

Frank Fernandez, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) manager at MSC.Software Corp, tells IEN that "pressure to increase speed to market, reduce costs, and improve products is continuing to increase, resulting in the need to enable intra- and extra-organization collaboration on a massive scale." As a consequence, "organizations across the world are working to connect all departments within their organizations, and share information with strategic suppliers," Fernandez says. (For more, click here.)

The design sector also has been struggling with reduced resources, notes Robert Ourt, product manager at Wieland Electric Inc. "In order to remain competitive and cost effective, the design engineer must produce quality products faster, smaller, and less expensively," Ourt observes. "He can achieve this by purchasing components that have the same qualities."

Ease of design saves time. Ourt explains: "Choosing components with built-in features such as coding to prevent connector mismating, jumpers to provide quick commoning of potentials, and captive hardware to ensure part retention are crucial. Simple features like part-numbers stamped on components make reordering quick and easy." Design engineers also face space concerns. "Smaller, more efficient products will allow more products to be placed in space sensitive applications," Ourt tells IEN. Additionally, engineers "can no longer evaluate a component's value by purchase price alone, but rather must consider the product's installed cost. Choosing a high quality, increased functionality component that may be easily integrated into a design may well save money down the road," he points out. (For more, click here.)

And the design team has to share information more quickly and efficiently. Better communication leads to "faster approvals, more streamlined design processes, faster turnaround, more accurate cost forecasting, higher quality, and greater efficiencies in the manufacturing process," says Jim Foster, president of DesignSource Technology. (For more, click here.)

How is design molded into the industrial enterprise? Despite the need for integration, pigeonholing remains a problem. Jim Coburn, director of control simulation products, Rockwell Software, says that "many companies fail to take advantage of data, information, and knowledge created by different departments or in different project phases. This is especially evident in design engineering where many mechanical and control engineers still operate in separate worlds that use different design tools and terminology to essentially accomplish complementary tasks. The lack of knowledge-sharing results in duplicated work, increased cost, and longer design cycles." Duplication of entry and other steps slows time to market.

"Cutting edge manufacturers are now using Web-based collaboration tools such as Rockwell Software Enterprise Controls to share knowledge between mechanical and control design functions," Coburn continues. "These Web-based collaboration tools bridge the information gap between mechanical and control systems design, enabling engineers to access mechanical CAD data for effective controls design." (For more, click here.)

According to Fernandez, PLM services and products take these tools a step further. "PLM brings together all of the technologies required for improving processes, products, and performance from concept to grave," he explains, "including integration between CAD, simulation, PDM, collaboration, BOM, materials databases, supply chain management (SCM), and ERP software. Within the confines of an overarching information architecture, PLM incorporates design, simulation and testing information, procurement and logistics documentation (BOM, shipping information and POs, etc.), manufacturing data, and even customer relationship management/sales data (CRM)."

Most integration software tools "are still expensive, complex, and very resource consuming to implement," Foster argues. "I haven't met a lot of designers who aspire to become 'product data experts' so that's why DesignSource has focused on developing a product data management tool that is intuitive in the design process and offers the ability to manage and communicate design information within the design group and to the enterprise."

Ping Fu believes that "new technology for rapid inspection using a 3D camera opens the opportunity to introduce manufacturing constraints early in the design process, ensuring that integrity is maintained throughout the entire design and manufacturing cycle." (The composite image shown here depicts Geomagic Studio's ability to automatically process points into polygon or NURBS models.)

Breakthroughs in the speed of communication, the drive toward common standards, and collaborative engineering may be on the way. Foster expects a "continued push toward some type of homogeneous design information and management standards that make it easier for people to work with, manage, and communicate design information."

The increased sophistication seen in information sharing on the "operational side of manufacturing" over the past two decades "reaped unprecedented gains in productivity and efficiency," comments Coburn: "With the introduction of new control design software, users are now able to attain those gains on the development side as well."

Adds Fernandez: "Eventually, everybody within an organization will be able to view and understand engineering data in the context of their function in the organization. This means that supply chain management will be able to incorporate analysis from simulation as part of its specifications to suppliers. For suppliers, this means that providing a component or assembly meeting CAD specifications will not be good enough. Suppliers will have to guarantee performance," he predicts.

"Today, software allows all partners, vendors, and clients involved in a project to communicate and collaborate with each other via the Internet, enabling the development to be completed quicker and more efficiently than ever before," states Anthony A. Marnell III, president and CEO of TRIRIGA. "Software can be utilized on a project throughout every phase of the design-build process -- from conception to procurement." (For more, click here.)

"Standards are playing a key role in allowing all parts of design, engineering, and manufacturing to flow together," Ping Fu concurs. "There are also strategic relationships among key vendors that enable different products to work together without much user intervention."

Coburn points to software-driven connectivity as another advance that allows users to "access production information, inventory levels, and WIP from the front office. Scheduling and transaction manager software programs can improve efficiency by helping users manage their process and integrate valuable shop floor data with enterprise IT and other manufacturing applications."

Moreover, "simulation, inventory tracking and scheduling software programs can be used to help manufacturers optimize their processes now and when the economy begins to upswing," Coburn states. "While a manufacturing software upgrade may seem like a costly investment in a slow economy, it can provide a fast return on investment by reducing costs and maximizing throughput."

The enormous costs tied to new design technologies over the past 20 years have declined sharply, Foster says. "Today, software applications associated to the design environment are available on PCs and in general at a much lower cost. This opens the door to more opportunities for companies to try out new technologies. For under $10,000, a company can now implement a CAD software package with sophisticated product data management capabilities that can be easily integrated to communicate with other enterprise systems such as ERP. In most cases, companies can experience a rapid return on investment."

PLM provides broader coordination, according to Fernandez. "PLM enables all of an organization's processes to run in parallel, including design, simulation, marketing, purchasing, manufacturing and repair and maintenance," he tells IEN. "PLM is built on the fundamental understanding that product performance, not data transfer, is the key to design and that means managing the storage and analysis of a tremendous amount of data."

What is design's role in lean manufacturing? The ability to share design processes and related information is key, Foster notes. "For example, information generated by the CAD software can easily be programmed to automatically produce a bill of material, which is then shared among manufacturing, purchasing, accounting, and other relevant areas. This can speed up many of the related business and production processes such as ordering and billing, while eliminating the need for human intervention."

Ping Fu believes that the lean model is the "driving factor for product differentiation and rapid manufacturing. The tools now exist to enable companies to produce personalized products in massive quantities. It all comes back to ease of use. Only 1% of goods manufactured today have usable 3D CAD data. In the minds of many, CAD stands for Computer-Aided Difficulties. At Raindrop Geomagic, we are helping companies move to 3D photography, the process of easily capturing the real object and quickly transporting a design between physical and digital worlds. This enables rapid manufacturing and mass customization that differentiates a company's products from the rest of the pack."

And rapid prototyping continues to morph into rapid manufacturing. "A key example of this is Align Technology, which last August shipped its one-millionth custom-made orthodontic device," Ping Fu observes. "In less than two years, Align successfully met the initial challenges of mass customization: fully leveraging the power of 3D photography and economically scaling up key areas of production for rapid manufacturing of one-of-a-kind products in mass quantities. We are seeing similar success stories in areas such as hearing aids, toys, crafts, and automotive and aerospace parts."