Benchmarking, copying, 3D printing and original ideas.

Any Auto company I have worked with over the years has benchmarked.
This article from wired.co.uk covers it very well.
I have copy pasted a portion here...


Simulation and modelling also allows GM to measure its new designs against those of competitors before a single weld is made or body panel is stamped. But in order to benchmark against the competition in the virtual realm, GM needs accurate engineering data on its vehicles-something competitors aren't exactly willing to give up themselves.

The beginning of the teardown process is a friendly pass. "First, we want to scan as much as we can without disassembling the vehicle," Pecar said. Next the exterior is scanned with a large blue-light scanner, and then red light scanning is used for details like the interior and seam tolerances. Finally, the position of components is recorded to help put all the pieces together again digitally as the teardown commences.
Things start getting unfriendly here. Each component of interest is scanned as the car is disassembled piece by piece. "You can look at a muffler and red-light scan it... it all goes back to the body position of the original model," Pecar said. Some individual pieces, like the muffler or a headlamp, may get cut open and scanned internally to build engineering models from.
The end result is a complete set of reverse-engineered computer models of the vehicles brought into the Teardown. In some cases, those models can be even more accurate than the ones used to design the vehicles in the first place. After all, they show the vehicles as-built.
Models are shared with GM's designers and engineers, who can use them to study the end product of competitors' design processes and learn from their successes and failures.

I have to say things appear to have moved along a notch since I was last in GM's benchmarking area (Mona Lisa... I have no idea why its called that) in the 1990s.
When I put forward my proposal for an educational venture, I looked at the competition. BPP own Phoenix University.
They have several physical campuses in Michigan.
http://www.phoenix.edu/campus-locations/mi/detroit-campus/detroit-main-campus.html

They appear to be successful. The group also has a UK footprint.
Benchmarking a successful company, obviously makes more sense than failures. Particularly, if you are trying to attract investment!

Going back to the GM article, I do find the 3D printer and its uses enthralling.

GM obviously use scanners to reverse engineer. They then use that math data to design around/compare with their products and /or they 3D print it!
An educational institute could obviously do that too. Enabling students to design a part or parts and then send it to a 3D printer and physically produce it in a quick and cheap manner is a very real option.
People like to touch and feel. Designers do too. Virtual is great. HOWEVER! 3D printing brings the design alive. I think its a great addition to the design process.

Here is a video, from YOUTUBE, where the CEO of AUTODESK Carl Bass talks about design and 3D printing. Carl, obviously deals with blue chip companies, and small start ups, as well as individual consumers.
Interesting stuff.

http://www.bfm.my/

Simultaneous as opposed to serial design.

I have just come across an interesting document. Brigham Young University are applying for a grant to study the possibility of having a part or parts designed simultaneously by several designers at once.
Interesting!
Among the people who have given their support for the grant is Tony Trecapelli. Tony was one of my GM bosses when I worked on the joint Saturn Opel project.

http://www.et.byu.edu/~ered/SHARE/Recommendations/body_recommendations.html

It was the comment fom Siemens that I found interesting:
"Collaboration technologies exist today, but they typically involve passing a control token back and forth from one participant to another. There is only a single "cursor", so the process is still essentially serial. The team at BYU have observed that on-line games provide a much richer environment, allowing multiple participants to engage in simultaneous activities. Each user can control his own cursor and his own view of the "world". A similar environment would be useful in design collaboration."


"Current CAD systems are based on the idea of a single "event" stream. The same is true of most rich document-centric applications. Some fairly fundamental architectural and user-interface changes will likely be needed to accommodate multiple users driving multiple cursors. It would be interesting to know what changes are necessary."

"Clearly, multiple cursors without some management would be an unworkable state of anarchy. So, there are interesting questions about ways to sub-divide the work. There are issues with control, security, and management of the data and the process." (George Allen Technical Fellow & Chief Technologist Siemens PLM Software, 2/15/2009)

The idea of design being carried out 24/7 globally is now an old concept! This was based on a single designer working on a part in say the UK. After 8 hours he hands it onto his counterpart in Asia. An American designer then continues for another 8 hours, handing it back to the UK..

As you can imagine this means the design parameters must be well laid out, and each design centre needs to be able to accomodate the others ego different viewpoint etc.

Simultaneous design would mean that theoretically 10 designers would be using the same design part at the same time, whilst I assume being in different geographical locations.

Controlling this would be very difficult. Who wins the design contest? Who deletes what and when?
Controlling the different design iterations will be interesting to say the least!

Time to market is the mantra. Speed of execution is the key. Good luck to Brigham Young University.
 I have embedded a Math model tutorial... A little fantasy never hurt anyone.