How can machine builders improve engineering productivity?
Industrial machinery has become increasingly complex, with even more mechanical components, electronics, and software. Customer needs for improved maintainability, increased automation, and better efficiency have driven this complexity further. Engineers are critical to successfully meet these requirements. Yet, engineers regularly lose productivity to non-value-add tasks that not only rob them of their ability to innovate, but also threaten their company’s ability to compete, differentiate, and grow. Imagine the potential of identifying and removing the most common non-value-add activities engineers face and empowering them to focus on designing better machines.
This research examines how engineers spend their time, where they lose productivity, and the impact on the business. It then identifies solutions and approaches to reduce time wasters. Based on a survey of 228 manufacturers across industries, this report shares the results of the industrial equipment industry and looks at their challenges and opportunities from the perspective of industrial machinery companies.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor, Siemens (registration required).
This report is based off the research published in The Business Value of Reducing Engineering Time Wasters which takes a look across all industries.
For other industry-specific related research, read:
- Reducing Engineering Time Wasters in Aerospace & Defense
- Reducing Engineering Time Wasters in Heavy Equipment
- Reducing Engineering Time Wasters in Consumer Products
- Reducing Engineering Time Wasters in Shipbuilding
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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 machine 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 innovation 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. To overcome productivity losses, one approach 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 industrial machinery industry by examining survey results of industrial equipment manufacturers. The analysis focuses on these results from the perspective of an industrial machinery 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.
Product Development Is Critical to Business Strategies
Business Strategies for Equipment Manufacturers of All Sizes
To understand what’s most important to equipment manufacturers of all sizes, Tech-Clarity asked about their business strategies (see graph). No matter the approach, the focus is on better equipment, either developing new offerings, improving them, or expanding their appeal.
Equipment companies are more likely to differentiate through product quality, performance, and innovation rather than compete on cost. From an industrial machinery company’s perspective, it is better to have superior offerings with a predictable cost rather than undercut competing bids with the lowest price. Winning a bid that is priced too low will only cut into margins, compromising profitability. Instead, high quality and performance can justify a higher price that provides more cushion to maintain profitable margins. Their brand differentiation also relies on meeting customer requirements and promised delivery dates as a reputation for quality and reliability is one of the best strategies for winning future bids. However, to achieve this, industrial machinery companies must empower their engineers to support a predictable process at the time of the bid to deliver what’s promised on time and on budget.
Why Engineering Time Wasters?
As industrial machinery companies strive to differentiate through greater automation, improved energy efficiency, and new service offerings, equipment continues to evolve into complex interconnected systems of mechanical components, electronics, and software. This complexity increases the risk of errors. Plus, the “one-off” nature to meet unique customer needs within a tight timeline puts even more pressure on engineers. Any delay or error may result in disappointed customers, putting future business at risk.
While there’s a lot to manage, supply chain disruptions can create opportunities for suppliers as OEMs look for new sources for components and subsystems. However, engineers need to be ready to respond to the increased demand. In other cases, machine designers must quickly adapt when supplied components come from a different supplier. Regardless of the opportunity, industrial machinery companies must empower their engineers to deliver value by strengthening the company’s product development capabilities to win customer loyalty.
The Time Wasters
What Slows Engineers Down?
The graph identifies the top engineering time wasters equipment manufacturers face. The findings highlight how much time engineers waste on non-value-added work. They need better ways to automate tedious tasks so engineers can focus more energy on ensuring customer requirements are met. Another top-ranking time waster, too many manual processes/bottlenecks, emphasizes this further.
Interruptions
Similarly, constant interruptions to answer questions, share data, and provide updates to others also slows engineers down. These interruptions break an engineer’s train of thought and take them away from the work they need to focus on. Yet, exchanging data is critical to prevent engineers across domains from working with outdated data.
Poor Collaboration
Along with interruptions, equipment manufacturers find that poor collaboration also wastes time. The findings reveal that poor collaboration is a challenge for small, medium, and large companies alike. However, the integrated nature of machine design components, mechanisms, and systems requires good collaboration so that everyone on the development team, across all disciplines is aware of changes that impacts them. Otherwise, they waste time searching for needed data or redoing work. Difficulties consolidating engineering information across disciplines further complicates this.
Redoing Work
Machine designers also waste efforts redoing work. They waste time recreating what they can’t find or fixing errors due to outdated or conflicting information. Better methods to centralize access to data would help get that time back.
Conclusions
Reclaiming Lost Time
Industrial machinery 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 ebook and does not contain the full content. For the full report, please visit our sponsor Siemens.
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