Designing new products in today’s highly charged competitive environment demands not only a full range of engineering and design skills, but also the ability to reliably manage and coordinate all aspects of the process. Whether a company is looking to develop a sleek new consumer device or something involving a complex set of assemblies, the project’s managers need to be able to leverage the skills of their people without losing control of their time and costs. Add to this the prospect of handling some or all of a developer’s new product design in different parts of the world – whether across the country or in an offshore location – and the challenge seems to intensify tenfold. A myriad of questions arise: How can you integrate the workflow processes? How do you coordinate the latest engineering changes? How can people halfway around the world communicate effectively? How can they work on a single platform or workspace? In fact, some companies are coming to believe that running a design project like this can only be successful where everyone can get together in the same location. While that may be a tempting position to take, the economics of competition today demand a different approach. Companies are finding the allure of lower paid overseas providers too great to resist.
Business Solutions
A number of technology solutions are available to assist companies that choose to outsource. The key business solutions are set out below;
Strategic Sourcing — Efficiently evaluate and select suppliers to provide custom components. Outsourcing management from ENGINEERING.com streamlines the communication and RFQ process so that all potential suppliers are better informed, turnaround is faster and quotes are more complete. It also enables companies to easily and quickly involve suppliers earlier in the design process when input can have the greatest impact.
Sharing Designs with Suppliers — Outsourcing management tools include a visualization component that allows suppliers to view CAD data without having to own the CAD modeling software. This protects the customer because the intellectual property represented by the native CAD geometry is not shipped offshore, while still allowing the prospective supplier to have sufficient information to interrogate the model and produce an accurate quotation. Once a supplier is selected, outsourcing management allows purchasers to collaborate with suppliers on how to achieve certain DF(X) goals such as increasing quality, reducing cost or speeding time to market.
Protecting your Intellectual Property — Emailing CAD files or using FTP sites do not provide the protection you need for your mission critical drawings and documents. With Outsourcing Management, only the suppliers you select have access to each document for uploading or downloading. Suppliers can change or mark-up documents according to the permissions that you set, but they can never see each other’s comments or even be aware of the existence of other potential bidders. Security settings allow you to ensure that all suppliers see the same data, or restrict viewing of documents to a subset of potential suppliers.
Transferring Product Information — Manage the many tasks involved in moving a product from design to manufacturing or from one manufacturing site to another. Outsourcing management improves efficiency by providing a centrally visible location and on-line process for managing any number of tasks, statuses and projects. All participants update the status of the tasks they are responsible for and can instantly see the current state of all other activities.
Collaboration Suite Outsourcing Management Solutions
These solutions that assist you in managing outsourcing, include:
Collaboration Suite RFQ
The RFQ capability of Collaboration Suite gives purchasing personnel a powerful and easy-to-use tool for controlling the RFQ process from suppliers. Using a flexible workflow, Collaboration Suite reduces the time spent to create and deliver RFQs and improves the process of receiving and analyzing quotes.
Collaboration Suite Viewer
Upload 3d CAD files in a compressed format for viewing, measurement and markup. The built-in viewer allows users to view 3d files without a CAD system. Markups can be stored in the project attachments section for future reference .
Collaboration Suite Document Management
Making sure your suppliers and co-workers have the correct file version has never been easier. Built in document management capabilities allow you to track your version history, lock files and secure documents.
Collaboration Suite Project Navigator™
Create on-line collaborative project spaces that serve as central hubs for orchestrating Outsourcing processes. Hierarchical task management is provided, which encompasses participants, roles, permissions and data.
All Collaboration Suite collaborative functionality is available with the ability to link any Collaboration Suite process solution directly to tasks and relevant data. Status rollup and tracking with Gantt chart display is provided within, and across, projects and subprojects.
Collaboration Suite Quick Collaboration™
Quickly create on-line collaborations where members of the extended outsourced product team can access, understand, collaborate on and resolve issues. A secure central repository provides access to all types of data and allows participants to view, markup and interrogate even native product data (MCAD, ECAD) with only a Web browser. Discussion threads, decision polling, action item management and history tracking are provided in an extremely easy to use user interface.
Collaboration Suite Quick Conferencing™
This module adds real-time collaborative capabilities. Live application, desktop and document sharing is provided along with whiteboard and conference recording capabilities. Includes automated management functions such as scheduling, invitations, meeting summaries and action item capture.
Collaboration Suite delivers significant business value to the Outsourcing process:
- Faster and better decision-making shortens time-to-value.
- Eliminating missed or repeated process steps speeds development cycles.
- Easy reference to latest versions of documents eliminates errors in purchasing and manufacturing
- Greater visibility into design processes increases accountability and management tracking
- Greater accountability for tasks improves on-time delivery across all programs
- Earlier and more effective collaboration between design and the supply chain enables reduced and more accurately understood costs.
- Better management of process steps and knowledge of issues improves product quality.
Collaboration Suite provides these benefits through its unique Outsourcing technology:
A streamlined and simplified user interface supports broad adoption across widely divergent functional roles and technical expertise, meaning that suppliers can get up to speed and contribute immediately without training. Integration between project, process and product data enables rapid understanding of information and its context. The thin-client architecture efficiently handles large complex product data enabling effective collaboration across a globally distributed outsourcing team.
|
