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L.N. Revathy

Imagine the headache of discovering an extra pillar when you are halfway through a civil construction job. All such problems could be avoided with automated design management.

IMAGINE reconstructing the twin towers, blown up in the 9/11 attack, or rebuilding Saddam Hussein's palace or even Baghdad. Not impossible, but it could take years to complete the task with compressed project times, complex processes and widely dispersed project members.

Why such huge projects? Take a simple housing project, for instance. If you had engaged a civil engineer to build your dream house and an architect to do the interiors, how many times would they have revised the plan to your taste? Lost count?

If only you had used the design data in the electronic format, the job could have been simplified. You would have saved both time and money, for, close to 7-10 persons are required downstream in designing and this works out to about 20 per cent of the contract cost. Of course, nothing can happen without the tools.

From building structures, turn to product design and development — take a manufacturing concern.

In an environment where the success of a manufacturing organisation depends both on the quality of the product and delivery time, there is a need for the entire design team to work together in real time.

The rapidly evolving digital economy and challenging business opportunities demand innovation in business processes that drive the entire product life cycle. Innovatively designed products with features that excel customer expectations would have to be introduced to the market faster than ever before.

A Gartner report has estimated 80 per cent of a product's cost as being built in during the design and engineering stage — a clear indication that product development has immense potential for improving company's bottom-line.

In such a situation, organisations would have to look for collaborative products and solutions that make it easy for user groups to share personalised/controlled design data across extended manufacturing teams in format that are relevant to each individual team member.

The information, which was hitherto locked in a filing cabinet would now have to be thrown open in the electronic format to users, albeit cautiously.

In product design collaboration, the cost of recreating data can be eliminated, errors in product development and manufacturing process can be halved, engineering change-order processing time can be substantially reduced, review cycles can be shortened, product quality improved. Also, it enables faster communication, apart from cutting down on travel expenses and time lost in meetings by 50 to 80 per cent.

Companies are increasingly employing the collaborative product development processes and have even claimed 80 per cent success rate for commercialised products, says the Regional Director of Autodesk South Asia Pacific, Andre Pravaz.

Recognising the need for such collaborative services in the design process, Autodesk's Design Solutions Group has introduced products such as the Autodesk Vault and Autodesk Streamline, besides rendering professional services.

The Autodesk Vault software, according to Pravaz, is a powerful work group data management system integrated with the company's Inventor 7 software. The Vault software helps manufacturers shorten their product development cycle and improve the engineering team experience in several key areas.

Streamline, on the other hand, is an online collaboration service, which can be stored, managed and shared on the Net, enhancing team productivity and reducing costs.

Pravaz, however, pointed out that though the Net was coming of age in India, keeping the digital format was one thing but using it was another and the most important part of this exercise.

According to Deloitte Research, over 67 per cent of high technology companies foresee mergers and acquisitions as the key factor influencing their product development strategies. Even now, more than 70 per cent of a product's design and process is being outsourced.

It is quite clear that outsourcing has come to play a vital role in the manufacturing industry. With market pressures on the rise, manufacturers outsource certain processes. Under such circumstances, the latest data will have to be shared across teams in real time and in the relevant format.

With an array of products and services designed to deliver faster return on investment and simplified product development cycle, Autodesk's Manufacturing Solutions Division managed to bring product lifecycle management to the mainstream market.

Its building information modelling, lifecycle solutions and infrastructure solutions allow users to create, analyse and share data across key market sectors such as the Government, civil engineering, telecommunications and utilities. These technologies help users create maps, engineer structures, survey land and analyse spatial data.

The wait may not be never-ending in the future, be it in product design or civil work.

lnr@thehindu.co.in

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