Warning—Reading this May Save you Time and Money

In my opinion, the one thing missing from the SolidWorks offices in Boston is a production line. Obviously, designing software doesn’t require one, but seeing a product go from design to reality often reminds me of why we do what we do. When I visit customer sites, I enjoy spending time on the production floor with the product designers, learning about why products are designed the way they are. Designers are always passionate about perfecting their work, as well as making them easier to produce.

I recently visited ECCO Group in Boise Idaho, and saw how they were taking their plastic parts to a new level—as well as eliminating many extra steps on the production line. ECCO is the world’s largest manufacturer of emergency warning products, such as back-up alarms and amber warning lights, for commercial vehicles. After adopting SolidWorks Plastics, assembly time for one product was “cut in half” said Nick Thompson, Mechanical Design Engineer at ECCO.

Nick, along with Manufacturing Engineer John Adalpe, is constantly refining ECCO’s light bar and alarm systems to make them more durable, easier to produce, and safer. Safety is key at ECCO, as all of their products are developed for safety. A great example is this new light bar, which can be customized to fit any vehicle:

Director of Engineering Todd Mansfield stated that an “advantage for [ECCO] in implementing SolidWorks Plastics is the ability to understand how a part is going to behave in tooling.” The ECCO team have quickly becomes pros at optimizing plastics designs. Check out the video below to hear the full story from the ECCO team and learn how they use SolidWorks Plastics to refine custom parts for aesthetics, functionality, and easy assembly.