August 2010
You are browsing the archive for August 2010.
A recent post in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) blogs tells the story of a product launch gone wrong: “The market failure of the Michelin run-flat PAX tire illustrates the common mistake of failing to realize that even a groundbreaking product has to create a complete consumption chain. Broken links in the chain mean a [...]
A new article in Design News looks at the state of design collaboration, specifically the steps being taken by design tool vendors to move design collaboration into the cloud (that place, according to the article, “where the Web is employed to deliver on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources, be it servers, storage, [...]
Manufacturers around the world rely on Excel for managing their bills of materials (BOMs) and other product data. From working with many of these companies, we’ve learned a lot about how to get the most out of using Excel for BOM management, and we’ve developed a number of recommendations on the topic, including the four [...]
Most Arena customers make the move to Arena from Excel. In other words, they manage their bills of materials (BOMs) in Excel until they start managing their BOMs in Arena. We help these companies get their data into Arena, so we’ve seen a LOT (tens, maybe even hundreds, of thousands) of Excel BOMs over the [...]
For his final project in the University of Montréal’s design department, product designer Christophe Robillard asked, “If the bicycle is the standard bearer for sustainable transportation, shouldn’t the object itself communicate the same message?” The Victor Bike is his answer to his own question. By re-conceiving the shape of the frame, reducing the amount of [...]
A robot learning to flip pancakes from Sylvain Calinon on Vimeo. Even if you put science fiction aside, it’s not hard to imagine a seemingly endless number of real-world applications for robotic technology. But have you ever wondered how a robot learns to perform its duties? In this video, a robot learns to flip a [...]
The Herman Miller Mirra office chair has a lot of good things going for it: It is made of 42% recycled materials It is made with no PVC (read about PVC problems here) It is 96% recyclable It is Greenguard-certified and may qualify for LEED credits It’s also $600 for the basic model, which leads [...]
