Bad design review meetings sink product development timelines

Instead, speed up time-to-market by re-thinking the way your team reviews designs.

Slow time-to-market is a symptom of bad design review meetings

In a recent survey, engineering leaders reveal a few key insights on the state of design reviews and product development:

When you consider how most companies run design review meetings today, this isn’t that surprising. Most engineering design review meetings bring large groups of reviewers together, so they can all sit and watch one person spin a CAD model. Then:

Just scheduling the meeting is a nightmare. Teams often juggle 3 or more timezones and 10+ different schedules.
When the meeting does happen, 1-2 people talk more than the rest of the participants combined. So, you know you’re missing critical subject matter expertise somewhere.
When it comes to tracking issues, it’s all manual. So, you just have to hope you caught every note in your issue tracking spreadsheet.

While it may seem like bad design review meetings are a symptom of slow time-to-market, it’s actually just the opposite.

Better design review starts with better tools, then better meetings

Remember how only 10% of engineering leaders think more meetings would solve miscommunication during design reviews?

What topped the list as the best strategy in its place was a better tool for facilitating the design review process.

Here’s the thing. Engineers have CAD for product design and PLM for product data and record-keeping.
‍
But, when it comes to interacting with people during product development– nothing. Or rather, no dedicated system. So teams lean on meetings, emails, spreadsheets and PowerPoint to conduct and track design reviews.

Instead what teams need is a purpose-built tool for bringing people and data together during design review ✅.

A tool that:

Lets anyone access CAD or 2D drawings to review
Allows reviewers to manipulate models and add feedback in the context of that model
Automatically creates an issues list as people leave feedback
Updates file versions with every upload, so everyone has the most up-to-date design

That tool exists today and it’s called CoLab

see how it works

The best engineering teams launch products faster with CoLab

Companies like Ford, Komatsu, Schaeffler and Schneider Electric use CoLab as their better tool for design reviews.

With CoLab these teams:

Upload a model or file package into CoLab
Send it off for review via a URL
Wait for subject matter experts to add feedback
Pull up the running issues list
Schedule a meeting after the review to discuss the most important issues

And the results speak for themselves.

The companies that use CoLab see:

Reduced lead times by 30%
Lowered Non-Quality Cost by 15%
Increased new customer acquisition and customer satisfaction

“We’d have to do a meeting or screenshots. Take local measurements of anything they are looking for. It can be very difficult to answer questions quickly. CoLab digitizes all of that. It creates that design environment on a single online platform." -Andrew Walden, Ford Pro Special Vehicles Senior Project Engineer

Integrate with your CAD and PLM

You don’t need yet another disconnected software solution. That's why CoLab does two things:

It integrates with your CAD and PLM software to create a connected tech ecosystem.
It replaces the 5-10 apps you use to do design review meetings today with 1 place for design review.

CoLab supports more than 70 file types, including native and neutral CAD and integrates with many PLM/PDM systems.

Aside from engineering system integrations, CoLab also integrates with Jira and supports security protocols, like SSO, user permissions and more.

The cost of bad meetings

Better tools, better meetings

Case studies and testimonials

CAD & PLM Integrations

Schedule a talk with a CoLab product expert.

A better tool for design review meetings

See how it works

Stop settling for bad design review meetings

Every engineering team is different.

Your team’s product development challenges might look different than another engineering team. But, the common thread is this: the best engineering teams want to solve the root cause process problem forcing them to delay product launches. So, let’s talk about it.

With a product launch consultation, you’ll talk with a CoLab product expert about:

Your team’s design review challenges
Where the gaps in your design review process are
Whether CoLab can address those gaps
How your team can start launching products faster

Fill out the form to schedule a product launch consultation.

Schedule a consult