The background:
Since the time the world has become a marketplace, companies across the globe are getting more and more competitive. The competitive advantage is no more in innovative product development, but in improving and optimizing the product development process. Product performance, innovation, quality, and customization are still the key factors. But, these are common with most companies, and hence they have to come up with ideas that will differentiate themselves from their competitors. Therefore, the investment is more in improving the design process, including changing CAD tools.
The Need:
The two key considerations to change are getting the development costs lower and shorter time to market. What is being observed now is, there are definite benefits if you consolidate CAD. And, these benefits are not just the savings on licensing and hardware costs, but beyond.
From the use of technology standpoint, consolidation provides the ability to focus more on a smaller number of solutions. This reduces workload tremendously, allowing technology to provide a better level of business support to today’s lean organizations… Beyond cost savings, though, are even greater strategic benefits… A single CAD environment can now offer ‘design anywhere –build anywhere’ capabilities, allowing companies to rapidly adjust to market changes.
The change in design investment strategy will involve a change in CAD tools. There are many reasons why organizations are switching CAD tools. For example, to remain in competition, companies need to be more efficient to increase the throughput. Another reason is, by switching platforms you get a better graphical representation of product designs, shorter design cycles, and enhanced recruitment.
The change seems to be paying off. Many companies feel that their annual revenue went up considerably, a benefit they derived from switching CAD tools.
