Wisdom on product design in the 21st Century

Wisdom on product design in the 21st Century from a paradigm shifter Copyright, 2003, Michael Davis and Headstuf Product Development. The 21st Century will be the century where disruptive technology changes everything we ever knew or believed. How we manage that change is the question for the future and the history for our children to know. It was more than 100 years ago that the Wright Brothers developed the Wright Flyer which not only changed history forever, but the event defined the design process for the next 100 years. The Wright Brothers did for design what Henry Ford did for manufacturing. NOW there is a new breeze on the horizon: Read about disruptive technology changing the way products are designed.

"Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently more convenient to use" quote by Clayton M. Christensen, from The Innovator's Dilemma-When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.
Read the article: The Fundamental Shift in the Product Design Paradigm for more extensive information on the purpose of the paragraphs below. Industrial design and engineering are going through a significant period of upheaval for this first decade of the 21st Century. Disruptive technologies are changing the face of everything from national borders to the nature of the corporation to the process of design and development. In the realm of product design and development, SolidWorks and other similar products are disruptive technology tools driving the tiny envelope of product developers, engineers and designers to work in an ever-integrated cohesive way. While at the same time, these tools are opening up opportunities for design and development to millions of inventors, entrepreneurs, and yes, high school students. Another change is that after 84 years, the vision of the Bauhaus School of Design is about to be realized, thanks to the expansive capabilities of the new disruptive technology tools for design and engineering like SolidWorks. At last, one person can now create all aspects of a design using one tool and the idea of the Master Designer or what I like to call the Completed Designer is taking shape across the world.
photo: Explorer Satellite and Fathers of American Rocketry.
The changes are being driven by three things: 1. Economic pressures on design and development resources. 2. New software tools that seamlessly integrate the design process from cradle to grave. 3. Disruptive technology driving a paradigm shift of massive proportions in the engineering and design fields. The effect of the disruption will be the massive shift of concentration of engineering influence on a worldwide basis from a multiple design platform process to a unified platform design process. In many ways this disruptive technology is like the period of the 70's where Japanese automotive dominance nearly destroyed the American automotive industry because one nation, Japan embraced a better way to design cars i.e., Taguchi engineering, QFD, TQM and Just-In-Time manufacturing techniques; while American manufacturers did not.
The exception is that in the current climate of the design process model, the disruptive paradigm shift affects all levels of manufacturing, not just automobiles, and it is inexpensively available to the world, not just Japan. It will most likely be the same scenario as the world tends to embrace the singular process of design while American manufacturers tend to separate industrial design and engineering. Both work, but the prior is more efficient, economical and delivers a much more cohesive design result.
While American management is slow to embrace the newer capabilities of a unified design process, most companies are still maintaining the old traditional lines of separation of designer, engineer and manufacturer. All are using different design platforms. Industrial design for example, is tenaciously holding on to its design standard Alias CAID tools while the engineering professions are maintaining the use of Pro-Engineer. The two packages work to feed each other, but neither can be used for both engineering and industrial design while SolidWorks and a few other innovative software solutions can. The future will belong to the innovator and to the companies that embrace it using these new tools. Of final, but probably the most significant note, is that the idea of paperless design is eliminating the draftsman class of employee. Control of specification is now in the model and not the document therefore the document can be simplified and act as a summary reference instead of a controlling document. In like manner, control of the model goes to the engineer or designer, removing the need for checkers, draftsmen, and other various engineering support personnel. What has happened is that since most components are produced directly from exported CNC, SLA, IGES, SAT, etc. data streams, documentation that used to be required is now highly simplified because the control of the manufactured object has shifted from paper to data set. Where complete detailed specifications used to be the mainstay of engineering design and drafting, a vendor no longer needs that much information--in fact it just adds unnecessary manufacturing cost. Therefore with the data stream plus a simple 2d representation with a few dimensions to verify sizing, parts can be produced more quickly and efficiently.
*Here is a summary list of how SolidWorks advantages the process to work in a more powerful way, delivering finely tuned design solutions:*
1. SolidWorks is a key tool for marketing and strategic product definition as well as product design and engineering package.
2. PhotoWorks and Animator are two essential add-ins extending the power of the software to industrial design, marketing and sales.
3. Industrial Design, Engineering, and Manufacturing can now collaborate using the same design tool.
4. Distribution of concepts to marketing, management and engineering via SolidWorks distribution tools such as E-Drawings, Viewer, Animator, PhotoWorks, 3D TeamWorks and 3D Instant Website extends the power of SolidWorks to the web, executive distribution, sales presentations and vendor management.
5. SolidWorks is a complete design tool, permitting cradle to grave design management using one basic tool. It is no longer necessary to purchase multiple base design products. SolidWorks with inexpensive add-in modules permits a more economical design methodology.
6. Execution of the design models using SolidWorks for production tooling is a powerful capability of SolidWorks.
7. ID Basics are a requirement for all designers, engineers and marketers who can now participate in the design process like never before using SolidWorks design and collaboration tools. This means that a designer can accompany a product manager on a sales call to do on the fly design modification for customers while often, production level files can be released for fabrication within hours of an order.
8. For companies desiring to continue using legacy data sets or existing pre-21st Century software development tools like Pro-Engineer and Alias, SolidWorks has an extensive set of import/export filters for most competitive software programs.
9. Exported data streams to create tooling and parts have eliminated the need for fully finished complex 2D fully drafted specification. SolidWorks Edrawings for example can give the tooling, rapid prototype or CNC vendor the option to pick and measure 3D models as needed instead of relying on constantly updated and revised pieces of paper. A designer can offer a more simplified specification set with a few key dimensions instead complete documentation to achieve the same result in 1/4 the time.
Copyright© 1996-2001 Michael Davis and Headstuf Product Development