Innovate or Evaporate
by Mike Lamora, Alignex Mechanical Sales Consultant (condensed from his blog article, found here)
A recent study was conducted by the Aberdeen Group on Best-in-Class performance of engineering organizations and the strategies they employ. They published a paper titled "The Engineering Executive's Strategic Agenda - Designing for the Enterprise and the Environment". You can read the original article here.
Below are key takeaways found in the article:
Top 3 pressures executives are faced with:
- Shrinking development schedules is the top pressure (60%)
- Rising raw material costs (33%)
- Decreasing product price-points (28%)
Strategies of the Best-in-Class
- Assessing product performance early
- Capturing and redeploying engineering knowledge
- Designing in a modular fashion
- Developing plans to protect intellectual property
- Deploying lean principles to their organization
Required Actions to achieve Best-in-Class performance:
- Assess product performance digitally in the design phase with simulation and analysis applications
- Correlate simulation and test results with computer aided technology applications
- Assess product regulatory compliance, quality, serviceability, and cost with specialty applications and plug-ins
- Create, track, and manage interfaces as well as map requirements and product capabilities down to subsystems and subassemblies
- Deploy Lean methodologies in the engineering organization to gain operational efficiencies
At Alignex, we have been helping companies achieve best in class performance for decades. If you or a colleague have been tasked to make improvements in any of these areas we would welcome the opportunity to discuss how we can help with a free consultation and analysis of your current operations.
Alignex Engineering Services
Do any of these scenarios describe your current engineering department?
- Recent Staff Reductions have created the need to evaluate short term contract work.
- New projects or a backlog in engineering changes mean you need highly skilled engineers who can step in and work quickly, but you're unsure about the viability of adding permanent headcount.
- You have the need for unique engineering skill sets, like Finite Element Analysis or Thermal Analysis and don't have these abilities in your current staff.
If you said Yes to any of these, Alignex Engineering Services can help.
As your partner, we strive to offer the most extensive range of capabilities possible. When your organization has specific projects, tasks or objectives to meet and are lacking the manpower and/or the knowledge to accomplish your goals quickly, our team of engineers and designers can help. We offer expertise in many aspects of the product development process. Our staff provides you with the means to resolve timing, resource and cost issues and deliver your projects on schedule in a quality manner.
Please contact your Alignex representative or fill out the form linked here to learn more about contracting with Alignex for Engineering Services.
Alignex Blogs Launched
Alignex has recently launched a collection of Blogs on our website designed to help our prospects and customers in many facets of Engineering Technology. There are separate Blogs for Technical and Marketing related subjects for both our Mechanical and Architectural (Civil) Engineering Divisions. The can all be found at http://blog.alignex.com/. There are multiple articles and headings taken from the blogs in this newsletter to provide you with an idea of what is to come. It is our intention at Alignex to share the information we feel can benefit our website visitors and to help reinforce our credibility within the Midwest Engineering Marketplace. Please check back regularly to view newly posted articles or subscribe to the blog to get the updates as soon as they are posted. View selected Mechanical Tech Blogs to the right.
SolidWorks Promotion
Buy SolidWorks for as Little as $199/month!
0% Financing for up to 36 months plus 90-day deferred payments on any combination of SolidWorks or Simulation products.
Many businesses today are looking for ways to keep their competitive edge without depleting their cash reserves and vital bank credit lines. By taking advantage of the SolidWorks Software and Subscription Service finance alternative, you can avoid investing a large amount of cash up front with 36 equal monthly payments.
Guarantee your organization a return on your SolidWorks or Simulation purchase ahead of the actual payment schedule. Best of all, because the purchase is processed in 2008, you will gain all of the tax benefits of your investment immediately.
This offer expires December 22nd. Contact an Alignex Sales Rep. today or click here to learn more.
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SolidWorks World 2009 Registration
User Groups
La Crosse, Eau Claire, Winona Area (LEWA) SolidWorks User Group Based in Arcadia, WI
Date: 11-6-08
Time: 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM Location: Ashley Furniture, Arcadia, WI
Address: 423 W. Cleveland Street
Arcadia, WI 54612
Note: Contact Betty Baker at (608) 323-6288 or email to RSVP.
Minnesota SolidWorks User Group (MNSWUG)
Based in Minnetonka, MN
Date: 11-11-08
Time: 1 PM - 4 PM Location: Hennepin County Library - Ridgedale
Address: 12601 Ridgedale Dr. Minnetonka, MN 55345
RSVP: RSVP for the November 11 meeting
How do you Create your Product Documentation?...
Developing new products is only part of the job. Products require documentation for user manuals, marketing materials and service documentation. 3DVIA Composer can help.
New Alignex Mechanical Tech Blog Articles
Autumn is upon us and another new release of SolidWorks has been rolled out. At Alignex, we have been working with SolidWorks 2009 since its early beta days. The word from SolidWorks corporate from the very beginning was that this release was all about performance. Many of the enhancements in 2009 are things done under the hood so to speak to achieve speed improvements. Click to read more....
Here is a neat way to control the QUANTITY of your weldment members in a top level ASSEMBLY Bill of Materials: First begin by...
Over the last couple of weeks on our support desk here at Alignex we have noticed a large number of general installation errors when installing SolidWorks 2008 or SolidWorks 2009. These errors range anywhere from installing with the wrong DVD to very high level including wrong registry permissions, etc. Click to read more....
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