How can heavy equipment manufacturers improve engineering productivity?
Heavy equipment has become increasingly complex as the amount of mechanical components, electronics, and software grows. Customer needs for customization, electrification, autonomous operations, connectivity, lower emissions, and better efficiency have driven this complexity further. Engineers are critical to successfully meet these requirements while ensuring compliance with local regulations and standards for global customers. It is a lot to manage; yet, engineers regularly lose productivity to non-value-added tasks that rob them of their ability to meet requirements. Margins are too thin to get it wrong, while poor quality or missed delivery dates threaten brand reputation, hurting the company’s ability to compete, differentiate, and grow. Imagine the potential of identifying and removing the most common non-value-added activities engineers face and empowering them to focus on designing better equipment.
This research examines how engineers at heavy equipment manufacturers spend their time, where they lose productivity, and the impact on the business. It then identifies solutions and approaches to reduce time wasters.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Siemens (registration required).
For related research, read Aerospace & Defense: Reducing Engineering Time Wasters to learn how aerospace & defense manufacturers can improve engineering productivity and The Business Value of Reducing Engineering Time Wasters for a look at this research across all industries.
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Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Product Development is Critical to Business Strategies
- The Time Wasters
- Implications of Time Wasters to the Business
- A Solution to Avoid Time Wasters
- Business Value from PLM
- Extending PLM Use Results in Greater Satisfaction
- How Companies Implement PLM
- Additional Values Due to the Cloud
- Conclusions
- Recommendations
- About the Research
- Acknowledgments
Executive Summary
Engineers Impact Business Success
Engineering is critical to exceptional heavy equipment design. Likewise, engineers are crucial to ensure designs incorporate customer requirements, stay within budget, and meet delivery dates. Therefore, empowering engineers is key to the successful execution of business strategies.
Too Many Time Wasters
Unfortunately, engineers report spending too much time on non-value-added work with too many interruptions, taking them away from critical engineering work. Furthermore, 96% of surveyed equipment companies say this loss in engineering productivity comes at a significant business cost due to missed deadlines, higher costs, and less innovation. One approach to overcome productivity losses is to manage product data better and make it accessible to those who need it, when they need it.
Reclaiming Wasted Time
This report identifies substantial engineering time wasters in the heavy equipment industry by examining survey results of industrial equipment manufacturers. The analysis focuses on these results from the perspective of a heavy equipment company.
This report explores how companies of all sizes reclaim lost time by examining the use and value of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) solutions to centralize data across multiple domains, manage processes, and collaborate better. Incidentally, PLM users reported fewer changes due to outdated information and errors, significantly reducing non-value-added work and shortening development times. This report also examines how companies select and use PLM solutions, including cloud-based implementations.
Implications of Time Wasters to the Business
The Business Impact
While it may be easy to accept these time wasters as the way work is done, they come at a significant business cost. For example, an overwhelming 96% of equipment manufacturers report that lost engineering productivity negatively impacts the business. All that wasted time is spent on something other than engineering heavy equipment, putting deadlines at risk. If engineers could get even some of that time back, they would be better positioned to stay on schedule and on budget. Also, considering how challenging it can be to find and recruit engineering talent, retaining and maximizing your engineering talent is critical. Empowering them to focus on the work they want to do, rather than wasting time on tedious activities increases job satisfaction, so they will likely stay longer.
Longer development times mean higher costs, risking going over budget. Plus, engineers have less time to verify requirements and optimize their designs for fuel efficiency, performance, and cost. Together, these impacts hurt profitability, making it harder to meet goals to improve margins.
Heavy Equipment Implications
To remain competitive and optimize revenue potential, heavy equipment companies must be able to meet unique needs to empower their customers to work in new ways to improve their competitiveness. To achieve this, heavy equipment engineers need the bandwidth to fulfill specialized needs, understand regional standards and regulations, and collaborate across disciplines to support new technologies, such as electrification and digitalization. Wasting their time on non-value-added work take away from these efforts while adding development cost. Therefore, a strategic focus on reducing wasted time will have a significant positive business impact.
Extending PLM Use Results in Greater Satisfaction
How Companies Use PLM
How you use PLM can determine how much value you will realize from it. While equipment manufacturers experience much value from PLM, learning from those most satisfied with PLM can reveal even more opportunities for additional benefit. For example, those most satisfied with PLM use it not only to store and manage files, but also to manage engineering changes, requirements, and design release processes (see upper graphic).
The most satisfied PLM users also use it to share design data with a broader audience (see lower graph). Not only does this unlock the value of engineering data to an extended group, but it also means fewer interruptions for engineers so they can stay focused on their engineering work. This also eliminates time wasters, like working with outdated or conflicting information. This could be especially useful for heavy equipment companies considering the number of roles involved in development.
Conclusions
Reclaiming Lost Time
Heavy equipment companies prioritize their future growth and sustained success on winning in the marketplace with better, differentiated equipment. To support this, they can significantly boost their product development capabilities by eliminating time wasters that consume engineers’ valuable time.
Equipment manufacturers find that PLM can empower their engineers to innovate by significantly reducing engineers’ time on non-value-added tasks. As a result, they can enjoy a competitive advantage. In addition, technological advances, such as cloud-based offerings, can reduce implementation time, cost, and difficulty, making PLM more accessible.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Siemens (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.