I have learned from experience that the Internet is not a place for total transparency. I protect my personal information by "attempting" to maintain anonymity. Having said that I also am a hopeless optimist when it comes to technology. In this country we use a phrase borrowed from your country; "Don't be like the ostrich that buries its head in the sand to hide from danger". I still find it hard to understand an animal this dumb. Of course, the human animal is no more intelligent when it attempts to do the same thing when threatened to extinction, by competition that will eat you alive... I cannot tell you how often I personally have tried to promote improvements that cost money to make more money, and have been ignored by ignorant or ostrich like leadership. The business world today is like life on your great barrier reef off the coast of Australia, very dangerous... If you are going to go swimming with sharks, you better be aware and prepared.
Oh, but you asked what we do in mfg... Well, we design engineered solutions for nearly all disciplines of businesses. Aerospace, automotive, commercial, semiconductor, off highway, you name it, customers from NASA, to McCaulla (chainsaws), from Chrysler to Amat semiconductor components. Nearly everyone needs at some point of their product, what we can engineer, manufacture and deliver prototypes in an average of 4 to 6 weeks, and production volumes to the millions in 12 weeks.
So here we are groping along attempting to migrate from 2D to 3D associative CAD/CAM/CNC. We buy as few licenses of Unigraphics as possible, send guys to training for CAM and then put off buying the license so any familiarity with the program is lost. After all you have to use it or lose it, or claw your way up the steep learning curve slipping and sliding 1 step back for every 2 steps forward. Sound familiar? I hope not...
Anyway, for us the benefits of associative engineering are obvious. We design parts, the fixtures for machining those parts, every part requires a mold, sometimes depending on production quantities multiple cavity molds. FEA is increasingly important to many customers, and moldflow for flow characteristics is available for engineering as well. Every part must be inspected of course so we do CMM on those parts too. Of course ECNs are a regular part of all engineering departments, so we have our share of engineering change notices. Our business model includes leveraging lower labor rates in Mexico for our high volume production processes. This is not easy, believe me.
Customer demands and expectations are only getting tougher with global competition...
I share your vision of the near future, "get up to speed with new technology, or go by the wayside, cause its only a mater of time before your competition passes you by"...
Enough said for now,
__________________
Scott_bob |