Engineering Changes as an Opportunity

How do you view engineering change orders?

It’s easy to see these unplanned customer changes as a headache—the messy part of a process that otherwise ought to flow smoothly from modeling to programming to machining.

Yet engineering changes also represent an opportunity. They are a chance to work more closely with the customer on realizing the design the customer really wants. They are also a source for additional revenue.

In this recently broadcast webinar, Cimatron Technologies describes CAM functionality the company now offers to those die/mold shops that want to embrace this more positive view of engineering changes. As Cimatron support manager Dan Branch explains, the software’s new functionality for revisions compares the changed geometry from the customer with (1) the version that the die/mold shop has been working on, as well (2) the version that the customer supplied originally. Comparison with both allows the software to incorporate the customer’s requested changes without losing the changes the die/mold shop has made. Tweaks to the model to facilitate molding remain in place—even as customer design changes are incorporated later.

This freedom to incorporate changes has various implications, Mr. Branch says. Just one is that customer changes can be implemented downstream in the process. An engineering change order could be made directly to the core or cavity, without having to go back and start over from the initial part data.

View Mr. Branch’s explanation and demonstration here.