Novastar

With an uncertain economy and competitive environment, every company is focused on the bottom line. Publicly traded companies have the additional pressure from Wall Street to produce positive short term results.

One of the biggest victims of cost reduction is the acquisition of new and value added assets. Critical systems that are necessary are typically accounted for, but it can be more difficult to obtain funding for hardware or software that fulfills long term needs.

This is applicable to requests for up-to-date CAD software and engineering workstations. Developers who use this technology understand the need to make these investments. However, tight budgets may lead to resistance in upgrading; administrators see an expense they would rather avoid. This results in a lack of appropriate resources for developers to do their jobs.

As a compromise, a group of developers in a department would share a few machines to get their work done. This practice is known as seat sharing. In theory, this sounds like an efficient use of resources. However, in practice, it can cause a number of problems for companies of any size. Here are four of them.

1. Seat Sharing Causes Diverted Resources

Sharing one or two machines is financially less costly than providing a workstation for each person in a department. What is left out of the equation when evaluating the cost to benefit ratio of buying additional hardware are soft expenses; coordinating how the resource will be shared becomes a new task. Conflicts will arise when multiple developers need to use the same machine. This diverts developers to become production schedulers when their time could be used more wisely.

2. Sharing CAD Equipment Creates Bottlenecks

Multiple developers wanting to use a machine at the same time creates a bottleneck; one developer has to wait while another finishes a task. For example, a developer may need a half an hour to execute a deformative model simulation. If another developer arrives at the workstation shortly after needing it, he or she must wait until the current process is complete. This downtime affects the overall schedule of a project as the next step of the design process is halted until the bottleneck is resolved. In a just-in-time design environment, these delays can have a serious impact on a business.

3. There is a Significant Loss in Productivity

In some cases, developers will resolve conflicts by stopping their jobs to allow another person to access a workstation. This not only stops the current workflow, but it may also interrupt a job in process that could result in a simulation being accidentally canceled or crashed. This causes another hidden cost: rework. It is difficult to measure or track the impact that rework creates when an incident occurs.

4. Seat Sharing Can Lower Employee Morale

Scheduling conflicts can be resolved by forcing developers to change shifts to spread out the demand on a workstation. This may seem like a reasonable solution to management, but asking people to work second and third shifts can cause resentment and a drop in morale. This may lead to developers leaving a job rather than work off-hour shifts.

There’s no question that businesses must be smart and creative when establishing their budgets. While seat sharing may look like a reasonable solution, the costs in productivity loss, rework, and lowered morale end up being more expensive than the lowered capital cost of purchasing less workstations. Taking this into account, seat sharing may not be the best choice.

3D printing has generated buzz in the manufacturing world, specifically with prototyping. The term “Additive Manufacturing” is being adopted in the industry, as it describes the production technique of building from the bottom up rather than shaping an existing piece of material. Additive Manufacturing creates products by layering and allows using a wide range of materials to build models. The process is developing rapidly, as methods that were not possible a year ago can now be accomplished.

Multiple Material Use

An advantage of Additive Manufacturing is the ability to use multiple materials in the construction of a model. The last eight months has shown breakthroughs in the use of alternative materials. For example, the cost, appearance, flexibility, and turnaround of models using metals in 3D printing has vastly improved over what was possible a year ago. Material options now include various plastics, polymers, sub polymers, and organic materials. Using edible materials to build food is now a possibility, such as building a customized cake.

In-house metal fabrication is now possible with Additive Manufacturing. A plastic prototyped model can now be coated with metal through a nano-scale electrolysis process. An electromagnet coupled with a depositing tip allows the metal to be assembled droplet by droplet. Inserting metal into a carved plastic model is no longer necessary to incorporate a mixture of materials; an entire prototype can be built from the ground up using all necessary materials.

Since Additive Manufacturing constructs a model one layer at a time, a model can now be made that would be difficult or impossible to make using traditional manufacturing methods. It is now possible to enclose one type of material in another. Voids inside of material can also be made as well.

Multiple Color Options

Until recently, using multiple colors in 3D printing involved swapping out spools, as machines could only hold from one to three colors. By combining various colors with a white polymer, it is now possible to use the entire color palette. This is similar to how an ink jet printer can produce the whole color spectrum from three colors.

Material costs are significantly reduced when a white polymer can be colored on demand, as it is no longer necessary to have an inventory of spools for each color that you would like to use. This allows staff and clients to be more creative in their prototyping.

The recent advancements of Additive Manufacturing have increased the value it can add to a business; it can help you remain competitive and respond to your market. Have you considered using Additive Manufacturing? Does Additive Manufacturing have an application for your business?

The Advantages of In-House Rapid Prototyping

The time it takes to develop a new product from design to manufacturing is critical in an on-demand world. This is especially true in the design phase. Traditionally, a model is designed and the assembly of a prototype is outsourced to a third party – often located overseas. This method is time-consuming and costly. As a result, more manufacturers are turning to in-house rapid prototyping, such as using a 3D printer to construct a model.

Here are seven reasons why the same approach should be considered.

1. In-house Prototyping Reduces Turn-Around Time.

Traditional outsourcing can take a week or more for a prototype to arrive due to transit time. In addition, internal development can cause more lag. Due to the time and expense involved, companies hesitate to request a prototype until they have something close to a finished model. Time and expense are less of an issue for in-house prototyping, as a physical model can be built on-site the same day. This can significantly reduce the timeline of overall development.

2. Rapid Prototyping Reduces Errors & their Associated Cost.

In addition to speeding up development, more frequent prototyping can also reduce costly errors that would arise from incorrect tooling. This reduces errors that would then become apparent in costly dies and molds that produce parts that do not fit together.

For example, when fitting a flange into a receptacle, making a mold to produce a prototype can reveal that the flange is slightly too large to fit. Re-making the mold to correct the problem is expensive so it is often not done. This is not necessary with rapid prototyping, as multiple revisions can be made within each iteration without the need to make a mold. Errors are reduced with this iterative process, and design changes are not compromised due to incorrect prototype dimensions.

3. In-House Boasts Huge Productivity Gains

Prototyping in-house reduces the lag time caused by waiting for prototypes to come back from a supplier, putting development at a standstill. This time is virtually eliminated when prototypes can be made on-site the same day, resulting in a more productive, cost effective development team.

4. In-House Prototyping Saves on Costs

The investment needed to perform outsourced prototyping is reduced by eliminating shipping and equipment costs when prototyping is performed on-site. Every instance when rapid prototyping can be done as opposed to outsourced prototyping will increase savings. By cutting out the vendor profit margin and shipping costs, more is saved as well.

5. Rapid Prototyping Increases Innovation

When faced with the costs and time lag of outsourcing, the most likely design is chosen to be made rather than creating various prototypes for a product. However, with in-house rapid prototyping, you are able to produce multiple prototypes with various features and iterations. This means hundreds of options can be tried in the time it would take for an outsourced prototype to come back from the vendor; Innovation is encouraged and the final piece is ensured to be the most appropriate design for your project.

6. Prototyping In-House Improves Security

Containing the prototyping process in-house means valuable designs are not sent to a third party who may or may not have the same security protocols in place. Maintaining control of the prototyping process from start to finish guards against piracy. Otherwise, the development of a new product could be undermined with plans being leaked by an insecure party.

7. Rapid In-house Prototyping is Future Proof

Advances in rapid prototyping technology have increased the scope of what can be done compared to a few years ago. Innovative designs can now be produced with various materials and colors at a fraction of former costs. The versatility to introduce exciting new products can be taken advantage of with in-house, rapid prototyping. Producing prototypes in-house eliminates time and cost issues related to outsourcing while keeping products at the forefront of the industry.

The transition to in-house, rapid prototyping is dramatically reducing the need for third party outsourcing and is increasing the effectiveness of product development teams. How are you handling the prototyping process? Have you considered bringing the process in-house?