In today's fast-paced manufacturing environment, where companies strive to remain competitive, DFM can help reduce costs, improve quality, and shorten production cycles. This article explores the fundamentals of DFM, its objectives, guidelines, and implementation process.
Enhance supplier communication and collaboration by adopting a single platform that addresses security concerns, nurtures strong relationships, and streamlines communication.
Value analysis (VA) and value engineering (VE) are two methods to optimize product value through product-based cost savings. These terms differ because value engineering considers cost savings at the initial design phase, and value analysis considers existing products. Here are seven steps to perform a powerful VA/VE project.
Greg Smyth, a former Group Manager at Tesla turned Career Pivot Coach at Career Pivot Accelerator, has significant experience managing supply chains for large-scale projects in the automotive and energy industries. On episode 1 of Peer Check, he sat down with host and CoLab CEO Adam Keating to talk about lessons learned along the way.
Going from initial brainstorms to finished design isn’t a straight line for engineering projects. The design cycle is inherently iterative, and more complexity in the design only leads to more complexity in the process. The more complex the design process, the more chances there are for the project timeline to get longer and longer. So when you’re responsible for hitting the mark on deadlines, schedules, and budgets—you want to take advantage of every single efficiency that will keep your design cycles moving along as fast as possible.
Even when it’s exciting, change can be hard. It can be even harder when you’re also leading others through a big change. But like anything, getting yourself informed and prepared makes things go much more smoothly. This post offers guidance on how to get everyone on board and successfully lead your team through a big change.
SharePoint has been around for a couple of decades now. As the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic drove higher usage for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint grew along with it. With over 200 million monthly active users, plenty of teams are using the platform to store and share files across different industries. But how well does SharePoint fit into engineering design processes?
Whether you've been doing design review for days or decades, you've probably put lots of thought into the designs you’re reviewing—but how much time have you spent thinking about the review process itself? This post overviews how and why design reviews happen, different ways to look at design reviews, common review types, and how these types are distinct from each other.
One of the hardest battles in managing complex design projects is how to keep the admin from overshadowing the design work. This post highlights some key reasons to create processes that allow critical project information to get documented (without adding excessive administrative burden to your team).
From Model-Based Definition (MBD) to the full-on Model-Based Enterprise (MBE), the engineering world has been steadily heading in this direction for years. The technology is starting to catch up to the vision, and we’re seeing industry leaders gaining the organizational capacity to make big shifts to the way their product development happens.
This post looks at the evolution of collaboration in mechanical design and engineering—from the changes that have already taken place in recent decades to insights on what’s next in the coming years.
Getting input on a design from multiple collaborators and stakeholders can be challenging on its own. Just to get it done, it takes a lot of admin work, organization, email tag, meeting requests, and all that other fun stuff. But “just getting it done” is only half the battle—the quality of the input matters, too.
While new tech solutions and modernized processes are changing the game for many teams, there are still plenty of face-palm-able moments that most engineers will be familiar with. So we’ve rounded up this list of highly-dreaded phrases that we hope will give you a little laugh and a little validation to know: you’re not alone.
The next time you’re kicking off a project or trying to get unstuck, try planning a brainstorm and putting these simple tips into action. You might be surprised at the difference a little bit of prep can make!
Despite the evolution of design and manufacturing in the past few decades, design review remains an archaic process compared to the advanced CAD and PLM tools that surround it. If your organization wants the benefits of efficient, reliable design review and real-time collaboration, start here.
Why is it so challenging for engineering design teams to find simple ways to collaborate virtually? It’s a complicated question, but our team talks to engineers about this on a daily basis. Here are three broad themes we consistently hear from design teams trying to solve their digital collaboration challenges.
One year after a global pandemic forced businesses everywhere to change, what have we learned? Find out what engineering managers can take away from 2020 so their teams can work better, smarter, and more collaboratively.
In 2018, CoLab approached the Johnson Controls Chillers team with a question. What is your biggest pain point in product development? The answer: Communication. Together, CoLab and JCI committed to solving it.
Despite the evolution of design and manufacturing in the past few decades, design review remains an archaic process compared to the advanced CAD and PLM tools that surround it. If your organization wants the benefits of efficient, reliable design review and real-time collaboration, start here.
This article is part of CoLab's new State of Engineering Collaboration Series which will interview a diverse mix of mechanical engineering professionals and industry thought leaders with a goal of better understanding the day to day challenges engineers face and to keep a pulse on the trends that will shape the profession in the years ahead. The following is an interview we recently had with Matt Bailey, Vice President, Mechanical Engineering at Design 1st.
Effective collaboration is a vital component of the success of any program, yet the market for tools that facilitate that collaboration has just begun to recognize the massive opportunity in front of it.
After speaking to hundreds of engineers, designers and managers this year, we’ve compiled the top 7 problems in the engineering design review process and brief insights into solutions for you to implement today.
This October, CoLab hosted a webinar demonstrating the state of design review in 2020, and where we’re headed into the future. Hosted by CoLab CEO Adam Keating, Adam & the audience discussed key priorities for 2021 including improving overall efficiency, shortening review cycles, reducing change orders and enabling better supply-chain collaboration.
When you dreamed of becoming an engineer you probably imagined inventing new technology, building machines, and creating new solutions to solve the world’s problems. You probably didn’t imagine how many emails, issue spreadsheets, change orders, review meetings, and powerpoint decks would be involved along the way.
