2. Context for the Conversation
• National Bureau of
Economic Research
declares Recession over in
June 2009
• But manufacturers are not
hiring back… getting
aggressive with current
staffing levels
• New products, not cost
controls are the path to
profitable growth
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3. Implications for Engineering Dep.
The End of Engineering’s
Black Box Era
• The CEO wants to be more
involved in product
development
• Increased focus on
innovation for competitive
differentiation
• Increased visibility into
product development
operations
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4. Implications for Engineers
Tough Times for Engineers
• Almost every development
project is understaffed…
holdover from the recession
• Product issues that get
downstream have quality of
life issues… not just more
busy work
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5. Two Sets of Development Activities
Engineering a Product
• Activities to explore
iterations that impact a
product’s form, fit and
function
• The purpose is to gain
enough understand of the
trade-offs in these options
to make design decisions
Documenting a Product
• Activities to create the
deliverables unambiguously
define the product
• The purpose is to provide a
definition to downstream
roles such that they can
manufacture the product
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6. Cultural Fit of Release-to-CAD
• Engineering is built on
an accountability
culture
• Leads to conservative
nature of engineers in
the department
• Informal hand-off from
engineers to designers
exists
• Engineers try to delay
this while gaining
knowledge about their
decisions
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7. When do you Release-to-CAD?
Checklist
• Most major
engineering
decisions finalized
• Most major
manufacturing
decisions finalized
• Some validation and
verification that the
product concept
works
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8. Release-to-CAD Milestone
• Some manufacturers are formalizing the
handoff between these two sets of activities
into a Release-to-CAD milestone
• In terms of process change, its not disruptive
as it represents what’s already happening
culturally within engineering
• The peer precedent to Release-to-CAD is the
Release-to-Manufacturing milestone
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Slide #8engineering-matters.com… published by…
9. Tools for Engineering Fall Short
Feature-History CAD
difficult for engineers
• Engineers with lifecycle
responsibilities can’t
dedicate significant time
to any software
• Skill and knowledge
requirements too high
• Change tolerance is very
low
Direct Modeling CAD is
promising
• Doesn’t require
knowledge of how model
was built
• The interaction paradigm
has low overhead in
terms of skills and
knowledge
• Change tolerance is very
high
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