Let’s just jump right in and continue on from where I left off last week. (I was telling you that my strongest point as both a Design Engineer and a Manufacturing Engineer was the asking and answering of two vital questions, “How are we going to make it?” and “How are we going to assemble it?”) As part of my “design process,” at each step in the creation of a design, these two questions are asked and answered in an ongoing iterative process.
Well, where do you get the data to create and validate the design? Good question! Having worked in many diverse fields, including Automotive, Consumer Products, Medical Devices and Disposables, Outdoors Equipment, Packaging Equipment and machinery, tools and fixtures for all the above, plus others, I have a very diverse repertoire of workable solutions. These vary by annual production requirements as one of the main factors.
Let me give you some examples of production requirements. At a very high-precision machine shop, an order for 10 pieces of the same part was a big order. At a medical device manufacturer, producing 50 machines per week was the target. At an automotive component manufacturer, an order for 30,000 pieces was grudgingly accepted, as a favor to the vendor, because their other orders for components were in the millions!
You are not going to spend the money to automate an assembly line that is capable of producing millions of parts per year, in order to build 10 machines per day. Likewise, it is worth writing a CNC program to run 10 pieces but perhaps not only for one. By having such a wide range of experience, I am able to pick and choose the best features from all of it, in order to synthesize a workable solution to today’s problem. For example, a concept and design feature I first came across in the Electrical Consumer Products industry decades ago is being used in a new packaging design application.
What can I do for you? Just call for a no-cost, no-obligation appointment
Again, if you’re a new reader and are missing any of the earlier letters in this ongoing series, just let me know and I will send them off to you right away.