Product design is a tricky beast in the industrial products market. Consumer products�computers, cell phones, MP3 players� have to be sexy little numbers that tug on a buyer's heart strings as well as the wallet. Industrial stuff just has to work.

But design has become more than just devising function and form.

A recent benchmarking report by Boston- based industrial think tank The Aberdeen Group links digital engineering, design technology and methodology with performance and competitiveness.

The study found top-performing companies are: 19% to 22% more likely than laggards to digitally prototype a product's performance; 34% more likely to use digital communications between engineering and manufacturing; and 35% more likely to assess a product's "manufacturability" in the design stages.

The study, which was paid for in part by several high-tech companies, examined 180 North American firms and the message is clear: the top-performing companies use the newest technology as a competitive advantage.

While this is hardly a new development, digital design can improve productivity and control costs in ways that many companies�even those using this technology�have yet to realize.

"As the complexity in products grows, the number of variables engineers face grows with it," says Robert "Buzz" Kross, senior vice-president of Autodesk Manufacturing Solutions for Autodesk Inc., one of the world's largest design and engineering software companies.

"Materials are changing rapidly. You need to simulate these environments to see what will work."

While Kross says top-tier automotive and aerospace companies dominate the adopters of best-in-class digital design and workflow, some smaller Canadian companies are taking the plunge.

Elasto-Valve Rubber Products Inc. (EVR)in Sudbury, Ont. manufactures elastomeric(polymers with the elastic properties of natural rubber)products for mining, pulp and paper, food processing, water and waste treatment, marine and petrochemical companies� anywhere where fluids and gases flow.

Competitive advantage
EVR uses 3-D digital design to develop and manufacture valve bodies and the tooling�known as mandrels�required to make the mostly custom units.

"We also use it to build 3D models to develop the 2-D drawings we give suppliers to build some of the tools for us," says Jim Allman, engineering manager at EVR.

EVR wraps its rubber products over the mandrels prior to curing so they take the shape of the mandrel once the rubber has hardened.

Digital design is very important to EVR, according to Allman, who says its use is a competitive advantage.

"It gives us a tool to take our engineers' ideas and put them to paper. It allows us to critique the design before we ever have to build anything."

Faurecia, a global automotive supplier based in Nanterre, France with three Ontario plants in Barrie, Bradford and Mississauga, has been using 3-D digital design to trim costs from its product development cycle. The company had more than 11-billion euros($14.9 billion)in revenue in 2006 and employs 65,000 workers worldwide. Magna division Intier is its main competitor.

"The volume of cars being sold is not increasing. We must optimize the development process to afford to make new developments," says Andreas Vlasic, a spokesperson for the company. "This cost pressure forces us to cut costs through standardization."

He says Faurecia uses the digital prototyping process to assess new equipment and materials and how they react in the manufacturing process, such as how laser cutters interact with the polymercomposite materials used in its dramatic front console designs.

Using the latest 3-D digital design also helped a small manufacturer in S�derk�ping Sweden connect its big ideas with development, production and the supply chain to cut ancillary costs.

"We understood from the beginning that exporting was necessary. To that end, if we can save money in the supply chain because of how a product was designed, that�s important to the bottom line," says Karl Thysell, research and development manager at HTC Sweden AB, a 130-worker firm that posted 2006 revenue of 249 million Swedish Kronas ($36.5 million).

The company makes a variety of industrial floor polishing machines and decided that novel design would be a differentiator from their competition�it files a couple new patents every month.

HTC hangs its hat on the HTC 2500IX industrial floor grinder with particle-filtered diesel motor. Resembling a NASA rover navigating the Martian landscape, it took HTC only four months to develop. That said, the company spent from 1992 to 2002 perfecting its digital workflow "with lots of trial and error," says Thysell.

HTC uses Autodesk Inventor to coalesce all of its design and development data in a digital environment to create a digital model, which simulates the finished physical model. Thysell and his engineers tweaked this model instead of creating many physical prototypes, a process that saved bundles of money.

"The time is long gone when you could afford to have the design and engineering departments working separately and updating one another with drawings," says Thysell. "We can�t afford to have trained professionals simply printing out paper for people."

Considering Canada's highly-publicized dearth of skilled workers, Thysell surely isn't alone in this sentiment.

Mike Ouellette
mike.ouellette@plant.rogers.com