Commentary: April 2006

By Robert “Buzz” Kross, Autodesk

It’s often been said that form follows function. I prefer to think that function drives form —  given the current climate of intense competition and steep change, form can no longer passively meander behind function. It must doggedly race to keep up. Its vehicle is called “functional design.”

Take the case of a Cincinnati-based manufacturer of food processing and automation machinery,  Planet Products. Its frankfurter loader was at risk of becoming outdated. It needed a redesign to reduce components, optimize efficiency, and meet the stringent demands of the food industry. The ability to easily disassemble and clean the machinery was of paramount importance. Planet Products used a functional design approach to test new ideas and come up with a fresh design that would set the industry standard. The company put function before form to design the SP3 Next Generation Loader, helping Planet Products become recognized and honored around the world for innovation and precision equipment design.

What can we learn from Planet Products’ success? Frankly, their secret lies in two places: the minds and desktops of their engineers. To replicate Planet Products’ success we must look at the tools upon which engineers rely to bridge the gap between form and function. In other words, the software they use and its ability to anticipate the needs of working from a functional approach. This can be seen as a radical break with the way we did things in the past.

As we know, engineering changes can be slow at first: small shifts in the way engineers look at problems; slight alterations in how engineers work together and with other segments of the manufacturing ecosystem; and minor tweaks to prototyping,  testing, procurements, manufacturing, and sales strategies. Ultimately the changes will rapidly accelerate, requiring designers and design teams to innovate through new methods.

It starts by looking at engineering challenges through a different lens. For so long we have sliced and diced our views into 2D representations that, when carefully grouped and annotated, combine to represent an idea. Precious time is wasted on the geometric representation.

On the other hand, since functional design emulates the way the design engineer thinks, this process benefits mainstream manufacturers on several fronts. It addresses the pressures and challenges of globalization, outsourcing, and mass customization by improving productivity, speeding time-to-market, and improving product quality. More simply, it represents a shift in how engineers approach problems. Functional design allows the engineer to work with simple representations of a product to test, simulate, and validate the design based on the product’s real-world requirements. Then, engineers can more effectively and automatically create and assemble the 3D models for a virtual prototype.

As the next engineering revolution revs up, the reach of communication has never been so vast. By virtualizing the process, ideas and changes can ripple dynamically through every department in every process in a manufacturing organization in seconds. It can be easier to change the 1s and 0s in a digital system than to go back and rework the raw material.

The powerful convergence of visualization, simulation, and modeling capabilities in software today blurs the distinction between CAD and CAE and makes it possible to manage complex activities like motion and flow analysis, engineering to order, change order, and bill of materials management more easily than we ever could before.

Today’s technology invites interactivity, communication, and collaboration because these tasks are now so easy and accessible. Customers and suppliers can have a voice early in the design process, bringing their needs and expertise to the virtual drafting table.

Buzz Kross, VP of Autodesk’s Manufacturing Solutions Division, started as a mechanical engineer at Triangle Package Machinery, and spent nine years at GE before founding Woodbourne Inc. Send your thoughts about this commentary via e-mail to DE-Editorsmailto:[email protected].