Archives for "Industry Trends"
Design in the cloud?
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, applications or services”).
Full disclosure: The article does mention Arena customer Mobius Photonics and Arena bill of materials (BOM) management software, which has always been offered in the cloud. But the bigger question examined is whether there are cloudy skies ahead for CAD and CAE tools. The article acknowledges the traditional reasons for skepticism about that possibility, including availability of the bandwidth and CPUs needed to deliver “the performance and interactivity required for data-intensive, graphically demanding CAD and CAE applications.” It concludes, however, that cloud-based solutions will at least have a place in the design tool mix of the future.
Particularly interesting is a brief discussion of some of the ways Autodesk is leveraging the cloud to offer new solutions. Read the full article to learn more.
P.S. Not surprisingly, the cloud is a topic that’s near & dear to our hearts. Feel free to check out some of our previous posts on the subject:
Cloudy…with a chance of clearing
Dear SolidWorks, Welcome to the cloud
Dispatch from SolidWorks World: Solid clouds?
You can also learn more about the advantages of on-demand software-as-a-service (SaaS) (i.e. cloud-based) solutions on our website.
Operations management makes its case in the hospital
A recent article in the New York Times touts the improvements that hospitals and health systems have made by incorporating some of the classic operations management strategies used in manufacturing facilities and on factory floors. While some healthcare providers are concerned with the emphasis on operations in healthcare, a number of hospitals, doctors, nurses and healthcare executives are seeing the benefits in both the bottom line and the care they’re able to provide to their patients.
The article highlights Seattle Children’s Hospital and its Continuous Performance Improvement (CPI) program, which is based on the kaizen techniques so widely (and successfully) used in manufacturing. Over the last ten years Seattle Children’s has examined the patient experience from start to finish, continuously making changes to improve everything from the management of surgical supplies and scheduling of MRIs to the flow of patients and the design of facilities. The results are noteworthy: The hospital credits CPI with helping it save $23 million, or 3.7% per patient, last year. And with efficiency improvements that enabled Seattle Children’s to serve 40% more patients last year than it did six years ago, the hospital avoided another $180 million in capital expenditures.
Other hospitals and health systems have taken notice, and many are trying to implement similar programs.
While anyone who’s worked in operations may wonder why an organization would do things any other way, this emphasis on operations, which has been so successful in manufacturing, is relatively new in healthcare. But it’s a development that has promise for all stakeholders: hospitals and health systems, healthcare providers, patients—and the operations profession itself.
At Arena, we know a lot about the life and times of the operations professional. (As providers of software that helps manufacturers manage their bills of materials (BOMs), control the engineering change process and share product information with suppliers and contract manufacturers, we’ve met countless operations people over the years! They like sharing their stories, and we like listening.) One thing we’ve learned is that operations is an underappreciated role in most organizations, typically noticed only when something goes wrong. Contrary to that perception though, a well-run operations group adds tremendous value. After all, in a manufacturing environment these are the people (the unsung heroes, some might say!) who make sure the right product gets built while schedules are met and costs are contained.
With a growing nationwide emphasis on healthcare reform, hospitals and health systems will face increasing pressure to cut costs and improve performance. As more and more look for solutions through an operations lens, the field of operations management and the value provided by its skilled practitioners will receive additional–and well-deserved–visibility. Other industries may also be inspired to take a similar operations-based approach. And for any operations professional seeking a new job but finding traditional operations roles in short supply, the extended reach of operations may offer just the boost they need.
Further reading: Factory Efficiency Comes to the Hospital in the New York Times
Letting nature inspire your product design
If you’re facing a tough design challenge you may want to look to nature to see how millions of years of evolution have addressed a similar problem. Biomimicry (which Marc mentioned in a blog post about tools to help design more environmentally responsible products) is the mimicking of nature to solve engineering or other human problems. The field of robotics in particular has been yielding some very interesting solutions to challenges of locomotion and range of motion. Here are a few of my favorites:
This perching unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) relies on a claw design similar to a small bird, enabling it to perch on vertical surfaces.
The Stickybot mimics a gecko, enabling it to climb smooth vertical surfaces.
This robotic handling system gets a greatly expanded range of motion by mimicking an elephant’s trunk.
With fluid-based muscles, this system mimics the muscle structure of a human.
To learn more about some of these (and other) projects, visit the online home of the Stanford Biomimetics & Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory, which designed the perching UAV and the Stickybot.
Trendwatch: Manufacturers & ERP software
A recent post on the Software Advice blog offers a bit of trendwatching from a panel of ERP vendors & consultants. The summary is that when it comes to ERP software, manufacturers are showing an increased preference for software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, integrated ERP suites and the ability to integrate their local facilities with overseas plants and suppliers.
The panel also acknowledges that because of the recession and reduced demand for their products, many ERP vendors are offering lower prices and/or additional incentives. Apparently some of those changes will be permanent, while others are limited-time specials, so if you’re considering an ERP system, this article suggests that now might be a good time to look…or at least to read the full post and learn more.
Track this! Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is everywhere
If you have ever purchased a DVD, you may have noticed a sticker with a barcode and a metallic ring of some sort attached to the DVD or packaging. That sticker is an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag, and this technology is becoming increasingly cheap, versatile, robust and ubiquitous.
RFID is basically a 2-part system for tracking items (objects, people, cars, you name it), consisting of a “tag” and a “reader.” The tracked item is tagged with a small passive electronic chip and an antenna that can be powered and read by passing though a magnetic field. The reader, usually a gate or a mat, generates a field that can pick up tags within about 3 meters and collect information stored in the tag (e.g. serial number, lot, etc.). This technology gained initial market traction for inventory control and theft prevention but as the technology has become smaller, cheaper, more reliable and more easily packaged, it is popping up everywhere.
The next-generation RFID timing tag from ChronoTrack
Take marathon race timing: A company called ChronoTrack Systems has taken RFID technology developed by Impinj Inc. and developed a disposable race day timing device, which I used during the recent Inaugural Oakland Marathon. That timing tag was a thin flexible strip that attached in a loop to the laces of my shoe. The next-generation timing tag from ChronoTrack (available this quarter) is integrated right into the race bib and requires no assembly at all. These new tags weigh essentially nothing and sell for roughly $1.25 in volume. Bob Finnegan of ChronoTrack explained that since the days of inventory control usage, the read rate of the chips has improved to nearly 100%. (As he put it, ”If a person has run 26 miles, we’d better capture their time!”) Best of all, the chips don’t need to be collected at the end of the race like RFID chips of old, saving runners time and race organizers money and manpower.
In addition to improved performance and cost, the chips can also be customized to withstand harsh environments. RFID is now used to track critical equipment in war zones (Iraq, Afghanistan) and disaster sites (Haiti) where weather and conditions are extreme. The Impinj website describes a tagging system for tracking hotel towels and linens that has been tested at up to 200°C (392° F) in washers, dryers and ironing systems. The tag can last for more than 200 washing cycles—pretty tough little tags!—and they look just like regular fabric labels.
Hotel linen labels can include built-in RFID tags
Impinj, the RFID technology company behind ChronoTrack, still makes RF tags for inventory tracking but they and other RFID manufacturers are also integrating the tags seamlessly into products people use everyday. RFID is used in electronic toll systems (e.g. Fastrak, EZPass), injectable subcutaneous pet ID tags and implanted glucose measurement chips in diabetic patients. It may not be long before we integrate this all together and just chip ourselves, go run a marathon, have the race fees automatically deducted from our prepaid bank account, get our race times recorded to our home page and have our blood chemistry analyzed post-race to send us an email with instructions for the perfect post-race recovery meal. Hmmm, I see a booming business here!
Is small the next big thing in manufacturing?
Chris Anderson has written a phenomenal article about the democratization of manufacturing in a recent issue of Wired magazine. I cannot recommend the article enough, if for no other reason than the chance to learn about a lot of cool micro-manufacturing companies, like Jawbone manufacturer (and Arena customer) Aliph and open-source car company Local Motors, which has been featured previously in this blog.
There is one passage in particular that I would like to highlight. It’s a bit lengthy, but I think the point Anderson makes is strong and is best left as unabridged as possible. Here is his take on what’s driving this revolution (emphasis is mine):
The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3-D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and a little expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door, and once it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and be in full production, making hundreds, thousands, or more.…
Today, micro-factories make everything from cars to bike components to bespoke furniture in any design you can imagine. The collective potential of a million garage tinkerers is about to be unleashed on the global markets… ‘Three guys with laptops’ used to describe a Web startup. Now it describes a hardware company, too.
‘Hardware is becoming much more like software,’ as MIT professor Eric von Hippel puts it. That’s not just because there’s so much software in hardware these days, with products becoming little more than intellectual property wrapped in commodity materials, whether it’s the code that drives the off-the-shelf chips in gadgets or the 3-D design files that drive manufacturing. It’s also because of the availability of common platforms, easy-to-use tools, Web-based collaboration, and Internet distribution.
We’ve seen this picture before: It’s what happens just before monolithic industries fragment in the face of countless small entrants, from the music industry to newspapers. Lower the barriers to entry and the crowd pours in.”
What do you think? Are we on the verge of the age of small-scale manufacturing? Are you seeing a lot of small start-ups in your market take advantage of these trends and technologies? Are YOU that small start-up??
Tools to help you design more environmentally responsible products
Ever since the publishing of Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s tour-de-force manifesto on the complicity of industrial designers in the filling of our landfills, product companies have been searching for ways to minimize the impact of their products while still maximizing their profits. With the help of books like this, as well as new fields of thought and a few online tools, that careful balancing act is becoming far less daunting.
One such field of thought, dubbed biomimicry by its founder and champion, Janine Benyus, is transforming the way scientists, engineers and designers approach thorny challenges. Biomimicry encourages them to first consider how nature may have already solved the very same problem. Too much calcification in your factory’s chimneys? Perhaps you should find out why seashells (made from calcium) are not infinitely large. These relatively ‘simple’ creatures must have a way to prevent further calcification of their shells that is harmless to the environment and readily available (read: free) in ocean water.
Dr. Benyus runs a consultancy called the Biomimicry Guild, which works with clients to uncover solutions to the particular problems they face. There is also the non-profit Biomimicry Institute, which offers a lot of downloadable resources on the practice. (See some great videos of biomimicry in action in Nick’s post on using nature as inspiration in product design.)
A trio of other online tools have emerged in the last few years to simplify the process even further.
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Ecolect offers ways to discover more sustainable materials. Its site includes an online directory of various pre-vetted, eco-friendly materials. You can also subscribe to the GreenBox™ service for about $900 a year to receive a box of 10 or so new environmentally friendly material samples every three months. Ecolect selects samples that are indicative of larger trends in the industry. |
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Sustainable Minds is an affordable, web-based service that helps you estimate, evaluate, compare and track the environmental and human health performance of your products, even in the earliest stages of design. Essentially, you can upload a bill of materials (BOM) and indicate which materials you’re considering for its contents, including their source locations and other facts. You can then calculate the footprint of your product, including how it stacks up in areas like disposal and reuse, and compare it to other benchmarked products. Try tracking it against past revisions of your own design to chart your progress in developing a more environmentally friendly product. |
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Sourcemap is an open source project working to document the carbon footprint of all major products on the American market. Its goal is to help people make more informed decisions about what products they buy by providing a Google Maps mashup and some nifty carbon footprint calculators that show the true supply chain for those products. The team behind this project also sees an opportunity for manufacturers with their acts together to use sourcemap as a platform for proving their environmental chops. |
It’s a brave new world in eco-manufacturing. If you haven’t read Cradle to Cradle, I highly suggest you start there. When you’re ready to apply your learnings, try some of the tools mentioned above.
Know any other resources that should be on this list? Please let us know.
Cheap, fast, easy — and good: A new era of interactive prototyping
The benefits of rapid prototyping have long been self-evident: earlier visibility into tricky aspects of a design and more chances to refine your ideas mean getting to market faster with fewer mistakes.
But as the typical product has become a symphony of electrical, mechanical and software components, prototyping the physical interaction between your product and its intended users before integrating the entire product—and doing so cost-effectively—has remained something of a challenge.
A recent core77 article, Sketching in Hardware is Changing Your Life, documents how hardware sketching—as it is being dubbed—is allowing companies to move well beyond the traditional boundaries of static sketches:
The napkin sketch is the lingua franca of all design. We all do it because—hundreds of years since we started doing it—it’s still the best way to get inspired, to get unstuck, to get real.
Until recently, electronic-device design has been sprinting up the steep incline of Moore’s Law. Our ability to conceptualize early ideas is tripping on its shoelaces. It’s hard to simplify the inherent dynamism of an electronic device—no matter how elaborate the margin doodle, it often confuses more than clarifies. And how could it not? Electronic devices are alive and interactive. They gather information about their environment or user, process values, and respond accordingly. Even the most well-intentioned sketch quickly reaches the limitations of the medium.
If a sketch of a static device can be thought of as a noun, a sketch of an electronic device must be closer to a verb. So while a designer can create storyboards to determine whether a phone should vibrate under specific conditions, like the intensity of light in a given space, to get a feeling for what that really means, a working device—a sketch model—needs to be built.
Sure, there have been ways to prototype physical interaction before: the HC11 and the PIC chip spring to mind. But the kicker is just how easy and accessible the new generation of interactive prototyping tools has become.
Meet the Arduino
For about $100, you (and any plucky start-up who may be eyeing your profit margins) can own an Arduino Board and its accompanying software. Started by a group of very talented and technically savvy interaction designers, the Arduino provides everything you need to start creating fast, cheap and high-fidelity interactive hardware prototypes.
Gone is the need to code and compile instructions in C; instead the Arduino sports its own simplified editing environment based on Hernando Barragán’s Wiring project where you can browse through and reuse hundreds of pre-defined functions for accomplishing all sorts of feats.
Also gone is the hassle of getting your board, your actuators and your sensors to talk to each other. Out of the box, the Arduino can sense its environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors (including capacitive sensing) and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors (servos, steppers, etc.) and a long list of other actuators. It can write to and read from “permanent” storage via EEPROM. It can communicate over Ethernet. It can act as a miniature web server. There’s even a library to allow for the transmission of X10 signals over AC power lines. The sky’s the limit. [For a full list of the available reference libraries, see the Arduino Libraries page.]
The Arduino itself has even spawned derivative projects such as Andre Knörig’s Fritzing which allows you to document and share Arduino-based designs with others.
So the next time you find yourself with a thorny user interaction problem that you can’t quite get your head around without seeing real people trying to solve it, consider taking the plunge into hardware sketching.
And if you want to learn more about the Arduino in the meantime, you can read about it in Wired or listen to a twit.tv podcast with company co-founder Massimo Banzi.
December 2009 PMI shows 5th straight month of manufacturing growth
The latest Institute of Supply Management (ISM) report on manufacturing, issued last week, finds that the PMI rose for the 5th consecutive month in December 2009 to 55.9%. New orders, production and employment were up, while inventories contracted and supplier deliveries slowed. The full report can be found on the ISM website.
Long considered one of the leading economic indicators, the PMI looks at the state of new orders, production, supplier deliveries, inventories and employment. ISM collects data in each area from supply executives at more than 400 industrial companies representing 20 industries across all 50 states, and then analyzes it to determine whether each area is improving or worsening. A PMI of 50% or above is generally considered a sign that the manufacturing economy is growing.
The Overview of the Manufacturing Report on Business (ROB) on the ISM website offers a full explanation of the PMI.
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