31st Dec 2009
Digital prototyping is the key to survival for manufacturers in an economic downturn, says Colin Watson of Symetri
The British manufacturing industry has been much maligned in recent years, although detractors –focussing more of the lumbering inefficiencies of 1970s – are themselves out of date; manufacturing in the 21st Century is a very different affair.
Since the post-recession environment of the late 1990s, UK manufacturers have seen a 50% rise in productivity – twice that of the economy as a whole. Indeed, many of the most innovative manufacturers believe the industry is in rude health and that it might be even more so, if the British government had stepped in even half as often as it has for the financial sector.
Now, another economic downturn looms; driven by soaring oil prices, the cost of raw materials has risen by 28% in the last year, yet manufacturers, striving to maintain a competitive edge, have only increased their prices by 9% over that period. Reflecting this, the Office for National Statistics has announced that manufacturing output has again dropped by 0.8% for the second quarter of 2008.
But the innovators spearheading modern manufacturing did not just batten down the hatches and hibernate during the 1990s downturn – they learned from it. Those who adopted the bunker mentality lost out to the strategists who maintained innovation and forged ahead. Many of these companies today are leaner and more efficient as a result and confident they are equipped to withstand another downturn.
One of the ways in which manufacturing leaders have moved on is by understanding and embracing change and addressing it strategically. With China and the tiger economies able to create parity products more cheaply, it is no longer possible to compete on price; rather, it is about the ability to innovate and to bring those innovative products to market faster.
This view was recently echoed by David Wright of the Manufacturing Advisory Service, a judge at the recent Manufacturing Excellence Awards. Speaking at the awards ceremony, he said: “Product innovation remains the fundamental cornerstone of a survival strategy.”
But how do today’s manufacturers continue to innovate without vast development expenditure and in the face of rising costs of raw materials? Industry leaders attribute this to the increasingly widespread use of CAD in general and in digital prototyping technology in particular.
It is estimated that 75% of the cost of a new product is design; in the past, much of this would have been incurred through the construction of multiple physical prototypes, most of which would have been abandoned in favour of a successor. But with digital prototyping, manufacturers can fine-tune accurate 3D models without incurring any production costs – a highly attractive proposition when it is necessary to innovate cost-effectively.
Autodesk Inventor provides a comprehensive set of tools for designing, producing and validating complete 3D digital prototypes of virtually any product. It helps designers to visualise, simulate and analyse how a design will look and how it will work under real life conditions before a single part is ever built.
A recent report by research firm the Aberdeen Group stated that best in class manufacturers typically build around half the number of physical prototypes versus the average, thus halving development costs. As a result, they get their products to market an average of 58 days faster, often beating competitors in the race.
However, the ability to create digital prototypes can also help test the performance and viability of alternative materials, perhaps experimenting to see whether a less expensive substitute will work just as well as a traditionally used material. As a result, manufacturers can avoid the trap of over-engineering a product and ensure unit costs are kept to the minimum.
Given it is usually necessary to refine prototypes, to incorporate changes and improvements and to run through the many ‘what if?’ scenarios necessary to reach the optimum design, it is important that the digital technology can easily manage the process of changes. Using non-digital methods, these changes can often result delays and most frustratingly and expensively, inaccuracies where revisions are made in one place but not in another.
Using the latest software solutions such as Inventor, every change in one part of the design is automatically updated in all the others which makes the process of trying out new ideas and reaching the optimum result far more efficient and affordable.
>Another time saving feature is the large database that sits behind the digital model; this can generate accurate bills of materials and give exact quantities of materials required for a design in its most recent form. The whole data set is updated whenever any change is made.
Many manufactures rely heavily on producing ‘derivatives’ – in other words, customised versions of one of their ‘off the shelf’ designs. In the past, the design team would have to start each new product from scratch – and many manufacturers still do this. With Inventor, the design data is held in a secure but accessible central store which means that components or even whole assemblies can be retrieved and re-used to help create new products. In this way, manufacturers can build on their existing strengths rather than continually reinventing the wheel.
As the more successful manufacturers become used to working with 3D design, their use of it extends through the chain of departments, suppliers and clients. The best practice manufacturers often win business by capturing their first designs on screen and obtaining not only development input but often client approvals to proceed based only on a digital concept.
>The ability to accurately present design information using Inventor also enables manufacturers to produce product literature or servicing manuals featuring exploding diagrams which can communicate how to break up, service and reassemble a mechanical product all within a single picture – a boon when dealing with international clients.
Manufacturers have been through some tough times and few of them will be carrying any excess baggage. That means making careful use of the resources they have. In the last ten years, manufacturing has changed drastically in the way it brings products to market. Although the majority have made the full transition to 3D technology, there are still so many ways to extend their use of that data to keep ahead.
Whilst it seems likely that the UK manufacturing industry will be tested in the months ahead, those who have leaned from the past and are prepared to embrace the future through the latest digital prototyping technology are well positioned to stay in business, whatever the economic circumstances.
