Engineering & Product Development Services
Now you can call Alliance for Engineering or Product Development Help
Alliance Manufacturing Group, a supply chain integrator specializing in custom products and components, is proud to announce the addition of Engineering to the ever expanding list of services we offer. While engineering is vital to the manufacturing process, it is difficult for companies to adequately staff an engineering department proportional to their continually changing scope and workload. This is why Alliance’s Engineering Services can help you.
Your larger customers are looking for more and more from you. If you don’t have a product engineering department or your current engineering resources are at full capacity, then Alliance can solve the problem with flexible engineering services.
Do any of these describe your situation?
- Need CAD drawings or 3D models made?
- Is your engineering department at capacity?
- Need a part redesigned to improve cost and quality?
- Need help with project management?
- Is your competition innovating faster than you?
Alliance Engineering Services can help you with all of the above and more. We focus on mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering. Our capabilities include but are not limited to…
Product Modeling and Documentation
Representing your parts, product or tooling in a digital form is critical for collaboration and other downstream uses, such as simulation. Good document management is key in a technical organization when tracking product or part revisions or production changes. A sloppy job of documentation will eventually catch up to most production shops.
Here are some of the most-used engineering capabilities:
- Scanning – Using the latest laser scanning capabilities, we can digitally capture your part, product or tool and provide you with the math data describing the surface
- Surfacing – Good surfacing is an art. We employ advanced surfacing tools and techniques to be able to take scanned data and turn it into a complete, “water tight” surface, or even a full-fledged engineering virtual model.
- CAD Drawings – Yes. Drawings are still useful for all kinds of things, especially on the shop floor, in inspection and on the receiving dock. A picture is worth a thousand words and a so-called “limited dimension print” is often all that’s needed alongside the math model. With the latest viewers on tablets, you can even have a 3D model right alongside other specifications and notes. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to spread out a big drawing and use it for mark-up notes.
- Other Engineering Documentation – Illustrated Work Instructions. Requirements. Specifications. FMEA assessments. Inspection or Test Reports. Change Notices, Authorizations and Tracking. Bills of Material. Project Plans. Patent Drawings. Training Presentations and Manuals. Service and Owner’s Manuals. Sales and Marketing Literature. Our engineers have a wealth of experience with all kinds of engineering and product development documents and systems.
Product Design and Engineering
How do you delight your customers?
Having the right product is a key ingredient, as is customer service.
Product design and engineering is about discovering the necessary requirements and developing design solutions that will meet or exceed those requirements.
It all comes back to the right set of requirements.
Requirements set the boundaries for ALL aspects of design. In the broadest sense, a complete set of requirements covers everything, such as: customer expectations, functions, features, all the physical properties, the materials, the manufacturing process requirements, environmental considerations, product life, cost and serviceability.
Achieving quality, cost and timing goals all come out of the right set of requirements.
- Voice-of-the-Customer and Requirements Building – Getting requirements documented up-front helps everything that follows move more smoothly. All design concepts are evaluated and tested against what the product is supposed to be able to do. Sounds like a no-brainer. Right? Yet getting this step right is so often overlooked.
- Industrial Design – Industrial design is about the aesthetic of the product. Shapes, colors and textures. Features and functions. Human interfaces. This is where we strive to create concepts whose application is intuitive to the customer or end user.
- Alternative Selection – Many times there are more than one concept that could work. Choosing right set of trade-offs is an important part of developing a successful product design solution.
Engineering, Assessment and Analysis – This is everything it takes to best predict how designs will perform. There are thousands of tools and techniques that can be employed, but some of the most familiar are: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA… of which there are many variations); Finite Element Analysis (FEA); Statics; Dynamics and Kinematics; Reliability Planning; System Architecture.- Manufacturing Process Design and Selection – We don’t overlook manufacturing. In fact, one of the first questions we always ask is, “How will we make this thing?” The same principles apply to manufacturing process design as product design. For us, product development automatically includes the “process” component.
- Verification and Validation Testing – At some point we have to prove that it all worked. We have parts and they need to be shown to meet the input requirements. Test planning enters our thinking also from the very beginning. “How should we test?” “How many parts do we need to test?” “What’s the right time to test?” “What will the test teach us?” These are the types of questions we ask ourselves when developing the test plan.
- Manufacturing Process Capability – When heading into production, the processes that create the products need to be capable of producing what the design requires. If they cannot, the product may not meet customer expectations. Especially when tolerances are tight, it is important to know what a process is really producing.
Project Management
Part of product development and engineering is project management.
We configure the team and set up the project according to the scale, complexity, time-table and budget requirements.
Aspects of our project management methods can include:
- Description of Deliverables – We describe the end result of interim steps and the final product of the project.
- Timeline / Project Plan – Paying attention to the calendar is key. Some projects and simple and short; others take longer and are complex. For the larger and more complex projects, we employ tools and techniques useful to larger teams. Contingency planning is part of our planning methodology.
- Resource Coordination – We make sure all those involved know their contribution to the end goal. We work to understand resource availability and understand that ours may not be the only project shared resources have to support. We are accustomed to working across levels of organizations, companies, time zones and cultures.
- Communication / Collaboration – We use the latest in collaboration and communication methods, including online meetings and shared virtual project spaces. We select different modes of communication depending on the need. Effective, succinct and timely communication helps keep all resources moving together toward the finish line. We tailor communications to the value for the intended audience. Communications to higher-level participants is different than to those deeper in the technical details.
- Adaptive Progress Tracking – It’s one thing to have a plan. It’s another to use it. With the finish line always kept in sight, we regularly evaluate progress by knowing what needs to be done when. We’ll make course corrections as needed. Managing the influence of new information and variables while achieving the end goal is the art of good project management.
Experience and Expertise
Many of our resources have decades of experience in their various areas of expertise, which adds up.
What that means to you is that you benefit from the wisdom that comes from experience. We apply that cumulative experience to your situation as we work toward a solution.
Let’s talk about your specific needs.
Contact us now to set up a time to discuss where we might help you be more efficient and successful.
