Technology Can Increase Your Fun (Engineering) Ratio
Last weekend, I spent 30 minutes in line for a two-minute roller coaster ride. The ride was fun, the kids were happy, so I was happy…but I couldn’t help but think about the amount of not-so-fun activity we had to sacrifice to get to the fun activity.
The ratio seemed unfair.
Is “Engineering” a Contradiction in Terms?
The same often happens with designers and engineers who think of amazing discoveries, cool innovative technologies, or better ways to tackle existing problems, but only spend 30 percent of their time doing the actual design and engineering tasks—the fun stuff!
What we often overlook are the things that take us away from all of those great and exciting things mentioned above. A recent survey by Tech Clarity brings into focus what engineers actually spend their time on when building customized products. In fact, two-thirds of engineers’ time is spent on things that aren’t “Innovation,” “Features/Options/Design” or “Engineering.” How did we let this happen?
From my experience, I understand that designers and engineers need to be team players in an organization. First of all, we need to ensure customers are happy; without happy customers, no engineering is required. Also, engineers need to help the business side of product development by creating images, correcting errors, quoting, and all the rest.
But is there a better way to help the company succeed without taking away so much engineering time?
Product Configurator to the Rescue
If your extended team (sales and marketing, vendors and suppliers, and even customers) could get the product information they need by themselves—easily and securely—it would free up more time for engineers and designers to do what they do best.
SOLIDWORKS Sell is a cloud-based product configurator that enables sales and marketing teams to access your product designs to create images or show product options and variations without engineering’s assistance.
SOLIDWORKS Sell gives customers the ability to add, customize, finalize, and buy your products all online. By doing this, it lowers errors (users can’t create what does not exist) and can assist with quoting as well as help you understand what to manufacture – by showing you through analytics – what people are actually choosing.
Not only will it reduce time spent on those tasks, it will also help others better understand the potential range of options a particular product has. Many companies can’t show all the different options or variables of their products due to the cost of photography or the time and cost of having to physically create each option.
SOLIDWORKS Sell solves this by leveraging your actual 3D product data; it displays every option, material, color, or size that you want your end users to will be able to choose. In other words, your customers can customize the product you built—to their hearts’ content— without ever contacting you or the company. In addition, your vendors and suppliers now have an easy way to understand every component of the product’s design without ever calling you.
Free up your time by letting technology do its job so you can get back to innovation.