DESIGN RELEASE - A CRUCIAL MILESTONE IN DEVELOPMENT
Design releases are becoming increasingly complex. Today’s smarter, more connected products include a variety of mechanical, electrical, electronics, and software components. These products need to meet tougher regulatory standards. Modern product development processes are also inherently collaborative, requiring engagement with multiple engineering domains, customers, suppliers, contractors, and other collaborators to create design deliverables.
In a typical design release process, engineers collaborate extensively with both internal and external stakeholders to drive superior product design. Once this iterative process is complete, the design team releases the related design deliverables to facilitate the next steps in development. Downstream operations such as manufacturing and servicing use these deliverables as critical inputs to plan their operations. Thus, design release documents are vital and releasing them on-time is crucial.
THE POOR HEALTH OF MODERN DEVELOPMENT
As noted in Lifecycle Insights’ 2020 Engineering Executive’s Strategic Agenda study, less than one-third of respondents hit design release more than 80% of the time, and 55% hit design release less than 60% of the time. It’s clear this is an area where organizations currently struggle. Companies that can hit design release on time for most of their projects will decrease time to market, improve their brands, get higher marks for customer service, and increase their profit margins. It’s no wonder that companies of all sizes have invested in product lifecycle management (PLM) and product data management (PDM) platforms to upgrade their design release and review processes. Communication is also crucial. The COVID-19 pandemic forced remote stakeholders to review design release documents virtually. Design teams must be able to incorporate their feedback quickly to accelerate design release. Progressive solutions that allow quick and seamless communication are key to reducing friction while meeting design release deadlines.
Cloud based SAAS PLM Solutions - The Benefits
The increasing complexity of today’s products has many organizations struggling to hit design release deadlines. Traditional approaches to designing and managing deliverables can bog down design release schedules. As a result, many organizations are looking toward new technology initiatives to help them enhance collaboration, reduce errors, and maintain a single source of truth about product requirements for all domains.
​
PLM solutions improve on traditional methods, but cloud-based SaaS PLM solutions are an even better choice. The benefits include:
​
-
creating a single source of truth for product definitions and design requirements;
-
managing all aspects of design updates and review, including communications, in one centralized location
-
supporting the use of a comprehensive digital twin to promote time and cost savings;
-
automating manual tasks to streamline the design process; and
-
providing stakeholders easy yet secure access to the design documents through a web browser.
​
​
READ THE FULL PDF GUIDE BELOW: