Electro-mechanical Design in Europe: University Research and Industrial Practice

The statements and conclusions in this report are offered for information and stimulation of discussion only and do not necessarily represent the views of the US Government or the Office of Naval Research. Executive Summary The objective of this study was to assess research and applications in electro-mechanical product design in Europe. Design is a high-leverage activity that can dramatically reduce the cost and time to make and use products, both commercial and military. It is clear that advanced companies and countries see design skills, methods, and tools as strategically important. This report follows a similar one devoted to Japan. [Whitney] Important similarities and difference were observed. Ten companies, 13 academic research labs, and 4 government funding agencies were visited between April 4 and September 25, 1992. The statements and findings that follow are based on those visit sites and cannot necessarily be generalized to sites not visited. They are believed to be representative of the electro-mechanical design effort in Europe. Conclusions Many European companies are surprisingly far behind both US and Japanese companies in recognizing the need to reorganize their design processes and see the connection between design process organization and CAD software. A few have begun to form cross-disciplinary teams only in the last two to four years. But some European companies are very impressive. Companies are in the process of revolutionizing their product design methods. Thus they want better, broader, and more sophisticated design tools and databases. Large companies face the uncomfortable choices of developing them in-house (the Japanese approach), buying basic commercial software and adding their own, or pressing the CAD vendors for more sophisticated tools. None of these strategies is wholly successful: companies lack deep software skills, CAD vendors lack knowledge of manufacturing and design. Researchers usually are not seen by companies as direct contributors to this process. Small companies cannot even make these choices but must buy what is available. More attention needs to be paid to these problems because only by bringing these diverse actors together will real progress be made. Good design research is going on in several academic research labs, but there is still not a reliable technology transfer path for new design methods. This is true even though academic research labs in Europe are in some cases better connected to industry than US labs, due to the required structure of many EC and nationally-funded research programs. Several factors are involved: …