Useful articles for busy engineering leaders

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3 practical ways to modernize your VA/VE process

Need to step up your VA/VE game this year? Here are 3 ways you can improve your engineering-led cost reduction efforts right now.
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4 Best Free and Paid Tools for CAD Collaboration

Collaborating on CAD design is essential to effective product development. In this blog post, we'll cover the benefits of using a CAD collaboration tool, the features to look for, and some top options on the market.
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IP security vs efficiency: What’s the best way to share engineering information?

This article gives a rundown of the most common ways engineering information gets shared today, and our take on them. But first, some important background to consider when evaluating solutions for security and efficiency.
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Approaches to CAD Collaboration 

Collaborating on CAD design is essential to effective product development. Facilitating the team to work together increases checkpoints, provides unbiased feedback and reviews, and adds complementary expertise to optimize the final production part.
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How to optimize your engineering design review process for ISO 9001:2015

This article breaks down some key information about what ISO 9001:2015 means for your design review processes, along with a few best practices your engineering team can follow to keep auditors happy.
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How to Improve Automotive Profitability Through VA/VE

The automotive industry is notoriously competitive. Cars are one of the most significant expenses in consumers’ budgets, and price is often at the forefront of a buying decision. This post outlines some areas automotive OEMs can leverage the power of VA/VE to improve their offer to consumers in a highly competitive—and dynamic—landscape.
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The pros and cons of sharing CAD using different file formats

Whatever the application, CAD files are essential to product design and development but sharing CAD is not always straightforward. In this article, we explain the pros and cons of native vs. neutral CAD formats, when to use 2D vs. 3D files, and what happens when you export CAD to a PDF or TIFF file.
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9 Key Learnings from PTC’s 2022 User Conference

After a couple of years of COVID shutting down the PTC User Conference the event returned to Orlando in early October of 2022 for what felt like an overdue reunion with 600 people. There was so much energy, passion and knowledge in one room all rallying around how we can improve and better leverage the tools we use in design and manufacturing. Here are my 9 biggest takeaways from the conference!
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How to Infuse Supply Chain Optimization into Your VA/VE Strategy

VA/VE should be less a lever to pull when you need to improve profitability and more a strategic mindset shift in the approach to extracting the most value from a product's total cost of ownership (TCO). Given that emphasis, VA/VE principles are ideal tools to unlock profit while optimizing the supply chain. 
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Real-World Examples of Value Analysis and Value Engineering

Value analysis (VA) and value engineering (VE) are powerful tools to improve profitability and sustainability that maintain VA/VE cornerstones of function and quality while reducing cost. The concepts are distinct, but even seasoned engineers often use the terms “VA” and “VE” interchangeably.