"A Modest Proposal" - Concept modeling is strategic

From: Dorjano.Baruca@src-comp.si
Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 - 11:04:55 EET


Congratulation Brad!

Finally someone dare to highlight this point of TCT.

>." My reasearch shows that a majority of designer/engineers are NOT

>accessing any RP until they are 70 to 90 percent complete with the
project.

>If we hope to dramatically reduce the time to market, then lets start

>utilizing concept models in the first 70%. Gunther Kruse was right when he

>said, "Too many companies have a blind spot to the strategic dimension of
RP

>technologies." Concept modeling is strategic.

>

>Brad Fox

>Rapid Design Technologies

I believe that most "time compression" comes from the roots. For the roots
I mean CAD. There is a known equation, which goes something like this;
designer generates 80% of expenses, when remaining 20% are expenses
generated by production. It's not exactly the truth, but is quite close.
Let me explain.
We all hear about Mercedes? A car. All the guilt here goes to the
designers,
because they make a bad design. They actually added an extra expense.
So, the designers are the most responsible for the added expenses. Let?s
take
another story. If the designer make a mistake and put a hole of 12 mm
instead
of 10 mm and if the product go to fabrication (1000 pieces) and let me
suppose
that the piece price is 100$, we have an 100000$ of useless costly
material.
On the other side, if the drunk worker make 5 bad pieces, he add a 500$ to
the
production expenses.

To minimize the possibility of such mistakes we have two solutions. One is
to
anticipate all aspect of design and production using Virtual Mock-up;
another one is to go through various design/prototype iteration. Which
process
is less expensive depends on the Virtual Mock-up software price against
classic
CAD-prototyping price. Anyway it's good to have a coming product in hand
for
closer examination before it goes to the toolmakers and further to
production.

And here we are. Do you remember my "Epson 3D printer"? The ultimate
concept
modeling beauty. That's what the industry really need. The proofs are
almost 200
messages rp-ml I receive about Epson 3D stuff. The RP as we know it it's
fine and
irreplaceable when we?re doing tools and zero series of a new product, but
is
toooooo expensive for concept modeling.

This is my modest opinion.

Dorjano Baruca

SRC Computer

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



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