Visual Issues Management: Improving Product Development

It’s likely there isn’t a product on the market today that hasn’t gone through dozens—or even hundreds—of design iterations on its journey from concept to manufactured good. Back when the entire teams were centrally located, staying abreast of that constant change wasn’t the enormous challenge it is today. However, as designers, engineers, testers, assemblers, suppliers, and service personnel become more globally dispersed, the oversight required to identify and resolve design issues has increased exponentially.

Today a company could have its headquarters in New York, a design facility in Munich, manufacturing locations in China, and suppliers in India. Consequently, regular design reviews cannot take place in a central location without an extraordinary expenditure of time and money. Furthermore, network limitations make real-time sharing of the enormous files created by today’s sophisticated CAD software programs unfeasible. Therefore, changes are often communicated via email and telephone conversations, making it difficult to precisely depict design modifications of 3D models.

To compound the problem, today’s manufacturers, struggling to maintain earnings during a worldwide economic crisis, have rightfully become even more wary of potential hits to the bottom line—not to mention customer satisfaction ratings.

This situation has motivated many best-in-class companies to employ Visual Issues management tools—software that enables key stakeholders throughout the product development process to clearly identify and resolve issues in real time using lightweight, yet accurate, 3D models, coupled with mark-up, tracking and capture tools to augment written descriptions. These tools can serve as a fundamental part of a company’s product lifecycle management (PLM) process and are proving to be key in streamlining workflows, reducing errors, and minimizing overlooked issues that evolve into costly downstream problems.

In an upcoming report on visual decision-making, industry analyst, Joe Barkai, Practice Director, Product Lifecycle Strategies for IDC Manufacturing Insights states, "Visual information closes the digital gap…. Using visual information, all participants in a collaborative decision-making activity can view and interact with the information simultaneously. This manner will facilitate better communication and understanding, and increase the fidelity of informed decisions across the enterprise."

One company we worked with—a large supplier of manufacturing systems and services for the global semiconductor industry—struggled for years to manage a design review process that was continually growing more complex as teams became geographically dispersed. Minor problems often involved scores of engineering change orders. The need for designers to catch and fix issues before they moved on to other projects had become a clear imperative in terms of reducing costs and speeding time to market.

In 2006, the company opted to integrate Visual Issues management into its design review process. Using the Community Collaboration capabilities of Siemens PLM Software’s Teamcenter solution, built on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server platform, the company sought to bring subject matter experts into the new product commercialization process earlier than ever, hoping to identify issues before they became costly problems to fix. Though some initially resisted the change, they quickly realized how much the software and the process itself were doing to relieve the daily burden of issues management and resolution.

Using Visual Issues management, engineering and non-engineering teams now capture and collaborate on resolving design issues within the context of 2D and 3D CAD models. Working individually or in groups via real-time review sessions over the Internet, participants mark-up, update, lock, and flag each issue that requires attention from someone else in the workflow. The software alerts each flagged person via email and includes a direct link to the issue, complete with detailed descriptions, 2D digital images and lightweight 3D models.

This organization listened carefully to all stakeholders and spent the necessary time and energy tailoring every aspect of its Visual Issues management program to facilitate a company-wide adoption. Using fully customized forms, employees now easily track issues and trace their ownership. Likewise, design review boards elicit solid, viable feedback from all participants in the form of design alternatives and suggestions for corrective action, thus eliminating the subjective nature of product reviews. The company also maintains a repository of resolved issues that can be used to help quickly resolve future issues.

In this real world example, Visual Issues management facilitates a more cohesive process that results in lower costs and fewer missed opportunities. It takes the company out of reactive mode when it comes to issues management, and helps them realize a significant increase in the number of issues identified and resolved prior to design completion. The result is substantial savings in reengineering costs and the immeasurable benefit of maintaining the kind of customer goodwill that comes with consistent product quality.

Will the effort of instituting Visual Issues management pay off for your company? If your product development process takes place in more than one facility and involves several design iterations, it probably bears further evaluation. Your PLM supplier should be able to help in this effort. As collaboration across a broad spectrum of widely dispersed players becomes even more critical, so too will employing tools that enable every player to communicate quickly, clearly and efficiently. Managing issues resolution through the universal language of visual images in an easy-to-use, readily accessible global environment are all key to making that goal today’s reality.