Enginuity Development Inc - Blogs on engineering and manufacturing

I have to say I am feeling very encouraged. It has been a long strange road these past few months. I have not seen anything like this. No question it has been hard.

I was not trained as a salesman or learned about business cycles. I learned about thermodynamics and calculus.  I can see a change in the rate of new businsss however. It's looking good. 

The month of April I saw a significant increase in the rate of new inquires and quote requests for Octane. It's a good start and I have confidence that things are starting to turn around. 

All my customers and sales inquires are from manufacturing and engineering companies. I know that if they are starting to look for Octane then it must mean their company is starting to get more orders.  

I hope that everyone is starting to feel the momentum change. I am.

Michael 

It has been a long road for Octane 2.0 and I know many people are anxious and excited to get the new update. I will begin using the blog to update everyone on the status new things coming and release dates.

Octane 2.0 is a complete re-write of Octane. We made a decision long ago to update and change the underlying framework used and to begin using hibernate as our database abstraction. We will also be supporting MySQL in the 2.0 release. We will be adding features to the ECN or request management module as well as releasing a brand new project management module.

So, where are we at today? Octane 2.0 has the underlying framework in place, the administration module is complete and the request module is 70% complete. New exciting additions to the request module are;

• User specific review step prior to submission.
• Unique custom fields for each request type.
• User specific approval requirements as well as the standard department level approval requirement.
• Task dependencies, sub-tasks.
• Follow up task sets for after completion.
• Observer function to let non involved users be kept up to date on the request status.
• Sortable tables for tasks and affected items.
• Improved text input and style tools for  the description field.
• Approval reminder emails,both automatic based on priority and manually push feature.

Soon I will add some screen shots of the new look and request features. We are very happy with the new direction it is taking and with the release of the project module.

Next week I will talk about the Project module in general as will as give a progress update.

Where do we stand today in manufacturing of all shapes and things? When I began my engineering career in the early 1990's I had a natural assumption that the things I designed would be made close by. I was wrong. Not everything but a great majority were manufactured in Mexico or China. Mexico for the cheap labor and China for the cheap tooling. Final assembly still took place on site. But even that was beginning to move.

So what does it mean to be a modern manufacturer? Is it about having a large force of skilled manufacturing personnel in the plant next door? Does it mean  having a smaller specialized set of personnel to run advanced equipment? Or does it mean merely configuring and assembling sub-assemblies?I suppose the question is what is the value of having manufacturing at all?

One could argue that just having great ideas and clever designs is enough. That where and how a thing is made is less important as long as the product performs.  Having out sourced manufacturing also takes some liability away from the larger organization. They can simply reject and refuse non conforming product. 

Design and manufacturing for a long time were inseparable. The engineer actually went out and built the things they designed. Got their hands dirty. Were able to see, feel and taste success and failure. That is an invaluable learning experience.  It was part of being an engineer.

Increasingly today engineers are focused on the design at the expense of the thing. Yes good design and engineering is done and the fundamentals still are achieved. But with less manufacturing "next-door" where an engineer can go see his part be turned, stamped, molded or welded together a connection is broken. That connection that between reality and paper. The reason you know deep down how thick is enough. What looks like just before it breaks. Or how difficult it is to assemble those parts with your own hands. 

Now engineers can simple review test results, look at digital pictures and collaborate over the web. That reduces cost and time, at the expense of learning from failure.

Manufacturing is important to America and to engineers. It teaches us, refines us, makes us recognize first hand how to make better designs. 

Today China may only make our cars, TV's and appliances. But in one or two generations they will be designing them too and maybe we will become the cheap labor.