incremental, offering a modular approach which can begin very simply in the design office and then gradually build to include the whole enterprise.

For example, Imass Design Solutions has recently been working with Miller UK Ltd, a company which designs and manufactures attachments for the construction industry, working with major OEMs such as Caterpillar Inc, JCB, Komatsu, Hitachi and Volvo. As Gary Thomson, Miller UK technical manager, explains: “Inevitably, the amount of design data we need to manage and re-use has grown with it. The growth of the company highlighted the need for design data to be carefully stored and managed from the very beginning of the design, in order to save time and resources further downstream.”

His solution was to invest in four seats of Inventor together with Autodesk Productstream, the new incremental data management solution. He now looks forward to an enhanced ability to share and re-use data, better version control and audit paths and the ability to transfer bill of materials (BOM) data directly into his company’s MRP system. He reports that transfer of BOM data alone will bring considerable time savings – even reducing a day’s work down to minutes, by eliminating the need to recreate and manually re-enter data into the system.

Many manufacturing operations have been streamlined or have been migrated offshore. However, in many cases, design teams have been retained and have since evolved to become centres of excellence holding extensive intellectual property.

Manufacturing’s best opportunity is to ensure these pockets of innovation work as efficiently as possible. But looking at the industry it can appear that there is nothing left to pare down or make more effective, even for those businesses that do have production facilities in the UK.

A while ago, implementing supply chain systems or ERP brought the promise of being ahead of the game, but now it just means you are up with the rest.

In other words, business process automation has become a ‘must have’ rather than a strategy for competitive advantage. And, while it can reduce operating expenses, it does nothing to help generate revenue. This takes innovation – the role of the designer.

Data management is still low hanging fruit – and now it is available for all sizes of company. But it means that designers need to come out of their bunkers.

In fact, every department needs to communicate their experience of the project and there must be some line of connection between all the different isolated islands of information.

Colin Watson is business development director, Imass Design Solutions Ltd, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. www.imass-ids.co.uk