Manufacturers competing in the global reset economy are struggling with multiple challenges, including this triple-whammy: strategically differentiated products are more complex. At the same time, customers are demanding greater customization and faster speed to market...at ever-lower costs. One area in which manufacturers are finding ways to meet this challenge is the often-overlooked area of product design. As many manufacturers are learning, innovation in complex-product design techniques can deliver significant benefits in cost, speed, product quality, and customer satisfaction.

For example, HTC Sweden, a global flooring systems company whose diamond grinding machines turn ordinary concrete floors into luminous work surfaces, has used "digital prototyping" to cut product development costs by approximately 97%. The previous method -- building physical models of new products -- cost HTC up to $500,000 per prototype, with some products requiring five such models. With digital prototyping, HTC created a computer-based workflow where conceptual design, engineering, manufacturing, and procurement teams are connected by a single digital model. This digital model simulates the complete product, and gives HTC engineers the ability to design, visualize, and simulate their products digitally.

Parker Hannifin, a motion and control technologies company, uses similar digital prototyping software not only to speed product design and production and save on building physical prototypes, but also to bring its customers into the process by allowing them to collaborate with Parker in a virtual design studio at every stage of development.

The value of digital prototyping is perhaps most apparent in its application to the fast-growing roster of mechatronic products that meld mechanics, electronics, computing, and control engineering. Mechatronics are vital to the work of such manufacturing industries as consumer products, defense systems and aerospace, automotive, health care, and materials processing.

In automotive, for example, industry research suggests that mechatronics helps manufacturers offer consumers alluring, fast-to-market new features -- blind spot detection, onboard GPS systems -- while improving reliability and driving down costs both in manufacturing and in after-market warranty service and recalls. Mechatronics is a major driver of differentiating innovation -- 30% to 40% of automotive product innovation is coming from increased mechatronic content, according to the research firm AMR.

While mechatronic products are popular and can drive strategic advantage, they're also challengingly complex. For example, the growth of electronics and mechatronic features in vehicles expanded the onboard computer code required to drive them from about one million lines in the 1990s to more than 100 million today, according to GM's former Chief Technology Officer Tony Scott.

The spot where mechatronics product complexity meets customers' need for customization and speed can be a sore one, or it can be a source of previously underappreciated value derived from the design process. While the actual cost of design in manufacturing is small -- approximately 5% on average -- the results of the design process dictate 50%, or more, of total manufacturing costs, according to David Ullman, professor emeritus of mechanical design at Oregon State University. Clearly, it's worth it for manufacturers to pay more attention not only to the "what" of design, but also to the "how."

Using a Digital Prototyping workflow enables mechatronics design in swift parallel across all technical specialties involved. This is a vast improvement on the time-consuming, mistake-prone, and costly traditional approach of handing cascading and interdependent developments serially from one specialist department to another as a product is designed. A digitally prototyped mechatronics design keeps all specialists apprised of what's happening in every other specialty as the product or part moves through the design process and toward production. To cite one of numerous examples, product-management sub-programs allow for on-the-fly updating of a bill of materials. So when a product's aluminum surface is shrunk or bent, the amount of on-order aluminum sheet metal changes instantly. The result of this open, collaborative feedback loop is not only more speed, but a better-designed product and a happier customer.

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