As seemingly every physical object is now embedded with computational hardware, the domains of mechanical and electrical engineering are becoming ever more entwined. The typical design team now includes an even number of electrical and mechanical designers. However, these teams are all too often disconnected from one another. Despite the marriage of electrical and mechanical design, the tools and workflows of each have historically remained distinct.
But there is a trend that is changing this, and for good reason, as a new research report from engineering.com suggests. The report, Integrating Electrical and Mechanical Design. Do Product Teams See Value? draws on a survey of 265 design team members to determine if they thought integrated electrical and mechanical design would help their teams’ performances. As for the latter question, the answer was unambiguous: yes!
What’s the Perceived Value of Integrating Electrical and Mechanical Design?
The report received input from industries spanning manufacturing, construction, aerospace, automotive, and more. The survey asked participants what types of engineers made up their design teams, the ways their teams spent (and wasted) their time, the frustrations their teams experienced, and the perceived value of integrating electrical and mechanical design.
One huge benefit design teams see in such an integration is increased efficiency. Survey participants were asked to predict how better electrical and mechanical integration could improve their team’s design speed:
83 percent of respondents predicted that integrated electrical and mechanical design could save their team time on meetings and rework. While most respondents suspect the time saved would be less than 25 percent, a small minority suspect time savings even greater than this. The consensus is clear: electrical and mechanical design tools that are not well-integrated cost design teams time.
Broadening the question, the survey asked design team members if they thought integrated electrical and mechanical design could provide a shortcut to delivering their products:
72 percent of respondents predicted that integrated electrical and mechanical design would help reduce the product development cycle and deliver products faster. 38 percent of respondents predicted that the product development cycle could be reduced by over ten percent, while slightly less (35 percent) predicted time savings of less than ten percent. Whatever the true figure, the ability to cut product development time by even ten percent is a massive boon to fast-paced, competitive organizations.
However, the potential time savings of integrated design software are highly dependant on the product market, according to Allan Behrens, Managing Director and Principal Analyst at Taxal.
“Some companies will find that digital (product) collaboration; just having changes happen automatically, as opposed to taking time out of your day to meet and discuss manual or discrete transfer of design data, would be hugely beneficial. That said, the relative benefits will be somewhat dependent on the frequency of iteration. Some companies, perhaps in more established product segments haven't got as many iteration or modification cycles for electro-mechanical elements as others. That won’t be the same as products, for example, designed in fast-moving markets such as consumer product or high tech; so it does somewhat depend on the product and market,” Behrens said.
How Does Integrated Electrical and Mechanical Design Provide Value?
The majority of design team members predicted that integrated electrical and mechanical design could save meeting and rework time, and ultimately, get products to market faster. But, how exactly do they expect to see these gains?
Let’s start with the first case, saving time on meetings. Nobody likes meetings, yet a full 94 percent of survey respondents indicated they have meetings at least once a month. Not too bad, but 70 percent have meetings at least once a week. And 20 percent—that’s one in every five designers—has to suffer a meeting every single day.
In electrical and mechanical design collaboration, unnecessary meetings can be made necessary because of the disparate ways in which each of those teams work. If there was tighter integration between the two teams, it could eliminate the constant need to catch everyone up to speed. In fact, integrated electrical and mechanical design software could keep everyone up to speed by default. A change made by the electrical team would automatically propagate to the mechanical team, and vice versa.
For the same reason, tighter integration between electrical and mechanical design can help eliminate unnecessary rework. In siloed electrical and mechanical teams, design changes can feel like a tug-of-war. A change on the electrical side can cause an unexpected problem on the mechanical side, and a mechanical change can likewise disrupt the electrical team. If design software offered better integration between these two processes, designers would no longer be subject to using incorrect versions of parts or inadvertently making changes that disrupt the other team. All designers, whether electrical or mechanical, would have the same up-to-date data, a single source of truth for their product designs. Both teams would spend less time on rework and more time on design.
As the survey reveals, these are widespread problems in electromechanical design. Participants were asked how often their teams lost time to impediments such as using incorrect design versions or lacking communication across electrical and mechanical teams, and the results were not promising:
71 percent of designers experienced problems due to incorrect design files at least some of the time, and 79 percent had problems with a lack of communication between electric and mechanical design teams. Better integration between electrical and mechanical design software may not bring these numbers down to 0, but it could go a long way to reducing the friction between teams.
Can Integrated Electrical and Mechanical Design Improve Quality?
There’s another big upside to integrated design software, according to Behrens: better design quality.
“The benefit is not just in time, it's also in quality. Payback from quality comes though savings the company makes through, for instance, reduced warranty returns, less litigation, or brand-related issues due to poor product reputation. Some issues are safety critical and in this, failure is not an option. For example, in an airplane, having a cable worn away and causing subsequent problems, fire, control surface failure and the like, is something you just don't want to happen. Ever. In these cases, integration confidence between electrical and mechanical is fundamental. Getting it right is not optional, it's essential,” Behrens said.
Even in the best of circumstance and with the best of intentions, design mistakes can happen. In industries like consumer tech products, these mistakes are paid for by a company’s eroded reputation. In industries like aerospace and automotive, these mistakes are paid for with human lives. While no design team can guarantee an absence of mistakes, more integrated electrical and mechanical design tools can add confidence to a design.
“It improves the likelihood of making sure you don't have these problems,” Behrens said. “There is never an absolute guarantee that everything you do will always be absolutely correct. But what you want is to have the balance of risk significantly (hopefully always) on your side. It's about making sure you've done everything you're capable of doing to make sure it works relative to the importance of a breakdown or fault. Life threatening has the most serious of consequences, obviously, but reputational damage and litigation can also be expensive and, in some cases, business critical.”
Adopting Integrated Design Software
Many design software developers are cluing in to the benefits of increased integration between electrical and mechanical design tools. Several software vendors are offering some interoperability between electronic and mechanical design packages, including Autodesk’s integration of Fusion 360 and EAGLE. Another example is the latest release of Solid Edge, Solid Edge 2019, which touts electrical and mechanical integration as a huge selling point for the software. Siemens spent $4.5 billion in 2016 to acquire Mentor Graphics, a prominent electrical design software developer, in order to build up their multi-domain portfolio of design tools.
“The idea that the electrical design team and the mechanical team could be working collaboratively has the power to save a lot of meetings!” praised Patrick Collins, technical director at force and torque test equipment manufacturer Mecmesin, a Siemens customer.
Unless your design team is strictly mechanical or strictly electrical, the potential benefits of integrated design software are hard to ignore. The ability to save meeting and rework time, deliver products faster, and ensure higher quality are all critical advantages to drive business success. If the design tools you’re using are standing in the way of these advantages, it may be worth updating or switching your tools to unlock them.
To learn more about the value of integrated electrical and mechanical design tools, check out the full research report: Integrating Electrical and Mechanical Design. Do Product Teams See Value?