Cover Story: The bottom line on collaborative design

Adoption of collaborative product development is growing, with OEMs, Tier One and Tier Two suppliers coming on board. In the automotive field, 500 companies paid to use Covisint’s collaborative product development and quote management tools in the first half of last year. Microsoft used Alventive’s engineering collaboration software for the design of its new XBOX video game system. Celestica, a Toronto-based contract manufacturer for the electronics industry, has had successful collaborative projects with Alventive and MatrixOne collaboration solutions.

The tools that now exist are making collaboration easier and proving to have bottom-line benefits for shortening lead times and reducing errors.

In a nutshell, the various technologies for collaborative product design allow project participants from OEMs, material suppliers and processors to meet, as well as share and store design files, in an Internet work space. At the low-tech end of the spectrum, the extent of collaboration may just be a video-conference with shared viewing of the CAD file. At the high-functionality end, collaborative product commerce (CPC) solutions encompass CAD, product data management (PDM), collaborative product design, engineering change requests, project planning and management, field service, after-market support, and more.

COLLABORATION CUTS TIME IN FUEL PUMP DESIGN

A recent benefactor of collaborative product design was Michigan-based TI Automotive, a Tier One auto supplier specializing in fully integrated fluid transfer, storage, and delivery systems. TI Automotive collaborated with Ticona, the technical polymers business of Celanese AG, on the design of plastic components for an electric motor-driven fuel pump.

Ticona has partnered with Conferos, Inc., a provider of collaborative design software called ProductSync. This gives Ticona more options to help clients like TI Automotive with design and development. By all reports, the recent collaboration on the pump design was a success.

“This process has been much quicker and more efficient for us,” says Sharon Davenport of Ticona. ” We’ve set up an e-room on our Web site (for TI Automotive), where we keep all of their project files. They can drop off large graphics files, which we then pick up, run analyses on, and then put the results back into their folders. Then we can have discussions about the reports and modifications to the design.”

“It’s nice now to be able to call the client and have them show me a drawing. It’s so much easier than flying somewhere just to have a quick meeting.”

TI Automotive’s Earl Maroney agrees that using the e-room which Ticona has dedicated to his projects has been extremely convenient. He says that it has also indirectly cut down the time for design approval.

“We’ve been able to provide global access so our colleagues in South America or Japan can review designs without us taking the time to transmit them all (through conventional methods). When you start transmitting these huge files they tie up email and the IT department becomes very concerned.”

“It also cuts down on the lead time, especially across wide time zones,” he says. “Our people on the other side of the globe can be reviewing design changes while we’re away from the office. Quicker transmission of the information to Ticona and back to us also saves a lot of time and paper. Anything we do to speed up the transmission of information back and forth speeds up the entire process, so it certainly has helped accelerate the design approval.”

So far, problems have been minimal. There was one incident where the server went down, but that occurred while Ticona was in the process of migrating its entire website.

Not all available aspects of online collaboration were used for this project, but both Ticona and TI Automotive see it as the way of the future, and plan on continuing to use online collaboration and expanding upon it.

“We definitely plan to take it further,” Davenport says. ” Right now online conferences are the most useful thing that we’ve used … but Conferos allows us to also review CAD files in a common viewing format and to mark changes on it.”

Kevin Cronin, global ebusiness director at Ticona, told a conference last fall that Web-based collaborative development is the next wave in the use of Internet in industrial business. The financial rewards, he says, can be real and immediate. “We have seen measurable results, particularly in a reduction in travel time and expenses, and fewer hours spent in plan development. Since communications are improved and resources are used more effectively, costly mistakes are minimized.”

“DATA VAULT” CONCEPT KEEPS ALL PARTICIPANTS UP-TO-DATE

While it may seem to be a minor change in procedure, the concept of using shared virtual workspaces to house data is actually one of the major benefits of collaborative product development.

“Because data associated with product design is frequently large, it turns out that the fastest way to move product-intensive information over the Web is to leave it right where it was created,” writes Jack Maynard of the market analysis firm Aberdeen Group (Boston, MA) in Making the Case for Collaborative Product Commerce as the Next Big Thing.

“By establishing a virtual product information repository, product data can be centrally stored or, using Internet redirection, pointed to with a URL so original data does not need to be moved and is always current,” Maynard continues.

“Moving the data takes time and bandwith; but, more importantly, moving data creates the added challenge of keeping the information synchronized — being sure that all participants are viewing the correct version. Having all of the stakeholders on the same page is worth innumerable savings in days and dollars.”

AUTOMOTIVE VISIONARIES SEE THE BENEFIT

Covisint, the automotive industry electronic marketplace formed in February 2000 as a joint venture of DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors, has developed the Virtual Product Workspace (VPW), an online collaboration framework designed specifically for the automotive industry and powered by MatrixOne. Through the first six months of 2001, Covisint sold 500 subscriptions for its collaborative product development and quote management tools (including VPW).

“The VPW is not necessarily a tool to help develop better designs,” said Tom Hill, a spokesperson for Covisint. “It just helps you better manage the design process and the collaborative process.”

“From the engineering end of it, using VPW, you would actually be able to see a 2-D and 3-D CAD rendering of the component you’re working on. Everything is recorded in real time and saved in file vaults, for later use. The people participating in the design session will see that you changed the specs for a component that you last discussed. Then they can go visit that latest version on the VPW, and not worry about getting the design change six months into the process because it was lost in the mail.”

According to Hill, the VPW provides an environment almost exactly like a face-to-face design meeting, only more convenient for everyone involved.

“You don’t have the logistics headaches of worrying about getting everybody together. You could be working with several of your colleagues from around the world at the same time.”

“You, as the host, would see everyone that is in on the design session. You’d be able to monitor what they’re doing, and you control the design session. You’re running it like you would run a meeting. When you want to relinquish control and turn it over to another engineer, be it an engineer that you work with or one that you’re partnered with, then you would give them appropriate control to lead a design session or conduct the online discussion.”

ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURERS EARLY ADOPTERS

The electronics market is one of the leaders in placing emphasis on cutting product development time. For the development of XBOX, Microsoft used Alventive’s Quick Collaboration and PreSourcing Collaboration products to facilitate online collaboration with developers and
suppliers.

Alventive was also chosen for inclusion in Aberdeen Group’s Top 10 CPC implementations report for 2001 for the company’s work with electronics manufacturer Celestica Inc.

“The Alventive-Celestica partnership was recognized because Alventive was instrumental in providing Celestica with a rapidly deployed and powerful solution that has improved efficiencies and reduced response times and related costs, resulting in the strengthening of Celestica’s relationships with their customer,” explains Rick Maynard of Aberdeen Group.

Beyond the hype and the novelty, that is the goal of collaborative design — faster, cheaper, better product design, achieved through better communication and optimal use of all partners’ knowledge and experience.