Preparing for "Next Generation" Manufacturing - and the "End of Days" for the traditional drafter

I generally catch up on my "business" reading on Sunday mornings with a bottomless cup of coffee and jazz, and though it wasn't news to me, an article I read this morning pointed out once again the importance of keeping up with technology and taking some of the associated risks with becoming an "early adopter".

The article, entitled "Are You Prepared for the Next Generation of Manufacturing?", written by Warren Smith (an industry consultant with Infor), is the first of a series being posted on the Industry Week website. The message to manufacturers is that understanding (and in my opinion, adopting) the key technologies leading the industry today is essential to take on the future of manufacturing. In this competitive market, a vendor can't rely on long standing relationships and customer service to hold on to business - loyalty in the rapidly changing future will be dictated by attention to meeting shorter deadlines, better predicting product performance, and providing innovation that companies need before the end users think of it themselves. 

I'll go a step further and state that manufacturers had best pay attention to these trends in order to stay competitive, or many will not survive.

First in the author's findings was a stunning fact about the incorporation of the robotic workers - at a labor cost of $4 per hour, a robot can now perform tasks at less than that of an overseas worker. And with a point of entry at around $20k, a robot can provide 3 or more years of service - without the need for health plans, paid vacations, etc. At one time, the robotic worker was a pipe dream for the SMB manufacturing market. Now, it's a viable alternative to placing ads, interviewing people and hoping for a reliable (gast!) human employee.

Second, Mr. Smith discusses how additive manufacturing is lowering development costs, increasing innovation and protecting intellectual property. We've all seen movies and TV shows where a 3D design is pushed to a printer and within seconds the model is in use - though the printers aren't quite that fast, the era of affordable, high detail, and yes, desktop 3D printing is here.

I look forward to the second part of the article, but these two trends alone signal that the days of 2D drafting are nearing the end. After all, you can't virtually test and prototype a design drawn in 2D CAD. So if you're not designing in 3D now, you'd better start soon. Who knows? You could end up designing a "worker" for your company's manufacturing shop floor....

AutoCAD - the best tool for design?

"I have a new project starting up and need X seats of AutoCAD"

As an Autodesk partner, we hear this almost every day. While a great start to the conversation, using AutoCAD in a manufacturing design environment today is just one small part of the equation.

Using construction as an analogy, you could certainly drive nails with a hammer, and the hammer is a proven, reliable implement; but as tool technology progressed, those builders who preferred to stay profitable (and keep their business) moved up to nail guns to maximize efficiency and improve productivity. And while there will always be use for the hammer, it isn't the primary tool anymore.

Whether you're building furniture, machinery, consumer products or doing space optimization in today's competitive market, if your tool of choice is AutoCAD, Iit's time to take a look in the Autodesk tool shop. With the rapid innovation of design technology, today's AutoCAD is the equivalent of a hammer: a well known and widely used tool. Granted, we in the reseller channel absolutely believe that our "hammer" is smoother, more contoured and will pound the (metaphorical) design nail better than other programs, but Autodesk has a nail gun too - and it's called Inventor. And just as the nail gun replaced the hammer, Inventor brings a more efficient, data driven, photo realistic process that just may trump AutoCAD as the primary tool in your company's workflow...

Design is just one part of your product lifecycle, and our team excels at helping clients move beyond 2D drafting into a more automated, data driven 3D prototyping environment.

In a world replete with 3D technology to communicate design intent, here's the challenge that I'm posing to our clients this year -

Do you really believe you can win more business with a hammer when your competitors are using a nail gun?