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Engineering - where it all begins
Engineering is an important department within manufacturing companies. Discover how to reduce your development cost and work closer together with other departments.
Engineering - where it all beginsThere is no denying that engineering is an important department within manufacturing companies. Product creation starts within engineering, and every decision made in the design phase influences the following processes and departments – sometimes even in unforeseen ways,
Engineering is not only about the creation of products; it is also about solving product problems and improving them.
Common challenges within engineering
Effectively designing and optimizing advanced products remains a constant challenge. These challenges are getting more complex due to incompatible tools, the inability to reuse design data, and the difficulty of collaborating across teams and departments in the company. In addition, new issues also arise around sustainability.
Here you have a summary of challenges we have seen in various engineering departments:
Increased complexity of engineering projects
Due to customized products and increasing customer demands, projects are becoming increasingly complex.
Increased material and labour costs
Material prices and labour costs are increasing, making it important to design as efficiently as possible with the right materials.
Speed of technological change
The speed at which technologies change also causes engineering departments to need to innovate
Smooth collaboration
An engineering department does not work alone but is connected to different departments such as production, R&D and service to optimize designs.
Regulatory compliance
Most products being designed need to have certain certifications or perform certain tests. Documenting these tests, and their results, can be challenging.
Risk assessment and risk mitigation
The quality of designed products must be tested to reduce the risks of defect.
Untap the business value of your engineering department
As the decisions made in the engineering process have a huge influence on the rest of the product lifecycle and thereby also other departments in your organization, there is also an enormous potential to be found.
In your engineering department, you want to reduce your development costs, identify and eliminate errors as early as possible in the design cycle, and optimize product designs through cross-department collaboration. With the goal of reducing costs and meeting the ever-increasing customer requirements.
Below are the key objectives every engineering department should strive for:
✓ Being able to complete complex projects easily.
✓ Easily bring different designs together, regardless of the tool used.
✓ Collaborate efficiently with other departments.
✓ Easily link certificates and tests to products.
✓ Get the correct information on the latest version of the product.
✓ Create a single version of the truth for all product information.
✓ Easily bring different designs together, regardless of the tool used.
✓ Collaborate efficiently with other departments.
✓ Easily link certificates and tests to products.
✓ Get the correct information on the latest version of the product.
✓ Create a single version of the truth for all product information.
It is essential that your engineering department
collaborates with other departments – understand why:
The engineering department must be able to easily hand over designs in the right form to specific departments, and sometimes receive input from them. To make this possible, data must be able to flow through these departments via a so-called digital common thread.
Below are some departments where collaboration with engineering is essential:
Manufacturing
The engineering and production departments must be able to look at the same and newest product related data. This is the only way to avoid manual errors and misunderstandings. Furthermore, problems during the production process must be easily transferred to the engineering department.
Field Service
The Field Service department can pass on common product defects to the design department so that they can make the necessary adjustments. Visa versa, Field Service needs access to the latest product information, like drawings, to be able to identify the right spare parts and repair approach.
Sales
The sales department can show 3D designs to potential customers to give them a better idea of the product. Furthermore, they must also be able to present the necessary certificates when selling and easily need access to the latest improvements of products.
Purchasing
By improving the collaborations between the purchasing and engineering departments, you ensure that the designers have insight into the prices of different components. This allows them to reduce any costs by using alternative/cheaper components. Visa versa, the purchasing department must be notified instantly when a new product update is out, so they can update or change orders made with suppliers.
Find the right solution for you
9A Advanced Manufacturing
9A Advanced Manufacturing is the 9altitudes best-of-breed solution on top of the Dynamics 365 platform for project based manufacturing organizations.
PTC Windchill
A world-class Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution that provides out-of-the-box functionality for real-time collaboration, information sharing, and dynamic data visualization to manage product-related data and processes efficiently
ISF sales configurator
Capture the know-how of your best product experts and empower your sales team
Keyshot VR
Create VR experiences and communicate your ideas and products in a more engaging way. Keyshot VR is the easiest way to move from CAD to Virtual Reality
KeyShot Studio Web
KeyShot Studio Web transforms scenes created in KeyShot into fully interactive 360° files, enabling your team and clients to view and interact with them.
We'd love to help you with your engineering solution.
Whether you're considering optimizing your engineering department, are already working with engineering software and need support, or want to talk about how to get even more out of your existing engineering solution, we're here to help.