CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
10 November 2008
Product News
Icona Solutions Introduces Perceived Quality and Cost Optimisation Services Offering
Icona Solutions Ltd. has introduced a range of consulting and engineering services designed to help manufacturers improve perceived quality in new products. Supporting all areas of manufacturing, from consumer electronic devices and domestic electrical appliances to automotive vehicles and aircraft, the new services draw on Icona Solutions’ years of experience in implementing perceived quality processes, enabling companies to review their designs at an early stage to optimise new products and avoid costly re-work later in the product development process.
Offered without the need for customers to purchase licenses of Icona Solutions’ aesthetica perceived quality simulation and visualisation software, the new services include the provision of experts to work alongside a manufacturer’s own team to help improve the way in which perceived quality targets and information flows across the entire product development process are managed. They also include the provision of suitably-qualified engineers to work with a customer, either on-site or off-site using a secure data transfer system, for as long as is required at any stage in the product development process, from early design concept through to manufacture and production, to ensure new products meet required perceived quality standards.
Measureable ROI and benefits
“High perceived quality is an increasingly significant differentiator for the buying public, as people become more selective in the products and brands that they buy”, said Tim Illingworth, chief executive, Icona Solutions Ltd. “The challenge for manufacturers, therefore, is to increase the perceived quality of their products without negatively impacting manufacturing costs, while continuing to shorten the design-to-manufacturing timescale. Our new services offering, together with our diagnostic tools, enables manufacturers to gain early insight into the impact of manufacturing variation on perceived quality at all stages of the product development process. This can result in a significant return on investment, with numerous examples existing of companies achieving very effective cost-savings compared with their earlier product development programmes and processes”.
Illingworth noted that the use of Icona Solutions’ new services has already enabled one client to save at least $500,000 on retooling costs as a direct result of a five-day perceived quality assessment project undertaken by Icona consultants during the design confirmation and validation stages of a development project.
He added that in another case, after using Icona’s services to undertake an investigation into possible fit and finish perceived quality problems on a vehicle interior console very early in the styling and design process, a customer was able to reduce production costs and overheads by more than $180,000 per year, with incremental savings per vehicle and increased yields adding significantly more savings over time.
Spanning the design-to-manufacture process
Offered either on their own or as a precursor to in-process perceived quality services, Icona Solutions’ consulting services provide process mapping, to identify and map the processes and data flows used within an organization, as well as tolerance analysis, with accurate, real-time visualization of the results.
Perceived quality services can then be provided, at the concept stage to analyse sensitivity, communicate targets, define virtual audit processes and virtual worst case samples and to visualize derivatives; at the design stage to optimize locator strategies, reduce sensitivity to variation and identify concepts with consistent perceived quality; at the validation stage to analyse full perceived quality; and at the confirmation and improvement stage to validate tooling changes, analyse root causes of perceived quality issues and to perform what-if studies.
Dr. John Maxfield, technical director, Icona Solutions, stated, “The new services that we are introducing are a direct result of feedback from our existing as well as our prospective customers, who are keen to deploy not just our technology but also best practice and processes for managing perceived quality. With our years of experience we are able to quickly review development programmes and help clients implement processes that improve perceived quality while containing, or often reducing manufacturing costs. We are confident that these services will be well received.”
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