Engineered for Offshore Growth

It’s true. Specialised high-tech jobs are indeed coming across the wires and into Indian networks

Outsourced design is gaining momentum: The overall worldwide slowdown in the aerospace, automotive and industrial machinery sectors is resulting in margins getting squeezed leaving Fortune 500 companies with no other option but to explore lower cost geographies. Outsourced engineering design is gaining momentum with companies beginning to outsource their design tasks to accelerate time to market as well as leverage lower cost geographies.

What has been outsourced to India in the past in the engineering field is mainly high volume, low value work like scanning drawings and converting them into digital format, markup of old drawings and migration of CAD data from one system to another. This kind of service fetches around US$ 10 to 15 per man-hour.

However, in recent times, with data connectivity between India and rest of the world improving vastly and western companies facing tremendous cost and time-to-market pressures, higher end engineering services work is coming to India. Among these are tasks such as 3D modelling, finite analysis, computational fluid dynamics analysis, drawing up technical specifications for tenders, plant engineering, redesigning for improved cost/performance ratio and value engineering. These tasks could get anywhere from US$ 25 to US$ 35 per man-hour.

Almost all the leading listed IT services players in India offer engineering design services. Most of the bigger players are serving prominent Fortune 500 companies. There are also a few players that are solely focused on engineering design services.

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Geometric forms global CAD/CAM pact with EDS

MUMBAI: THE Mumbai-based CAD/ CAM software services company Geometric has formed a global alliance with EDS, the second largest software services firm in the world.

The alliance will enable Geometric to bid for all CAD/CAM related projects that EDS undertakes and bring them off-shore to its Indian development centre.

According to Manu Parpia, managing director, Geometric Software, ”Out relationship with EDS was restricted to working on their software products.

Now, we will be able to channelise our off-shore development services to any part of EDS.” Geometric already has a joint venture with Dassault, one of the biggest competitor of EDS in the CAD/CAM product space. It also has a global agreement with IBM for offering its CAD/CAM development services.

Geometric’s unconsolidated results for the quarter ending December 31, ‘02 have not been very good. The company reported a 17% decline in net profit at Rs 2.9 crore, from Rs 3.5 crore in the year-ago quarter.

Total income increased 3.6% to Rs 16.3 crore from Rs 15.7 crore. These results do not include the figures from the subsidiary and the joint venture company.

According to Mr Parpia, the drop in net profit is due to a large one-time product sale in the comparable quarter last year. Geometric is also considering an entry into the engineering services space.

According to Mr Parpia, “We have been working on the programming aspect by developing products for CAD/CAM product vendors. Through this offering, we are getting closer to the end-user of these tools, namely automobile or consumer electronic companies.”

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Automation and CAD/CAM Adoption in Designing by Knitwear Industry of Ludhiana

The present investigation was conducted on automation and CAD/CAM adoption in designing by knitwear industry of Ludhiana. Data were collected from 110 knitwear units of Ludhiana consisting 56 small, 29 medium and 25 large scale knitwear units by using interview schedule. The sample was selected according to the probability proportional to size by following stratified sampling technique. The results revealed that for fabric designing, automatic machines, computer aided designing systems and manual sketching were used whereas in garment designing, manual sketching and CAD system were used. For the designing of knitwears, various softwares like Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Fukuhara, Universal, Stoll, Gerber, Autocad and Shima Seiki were used. Rapid generation of new styles, value addition, cost reduction, fast modification of design etc. were the main reasons given for using automation and CAD/CAM systems in knitwear designing.

Knitting is the second most frequently used method of fabric construction. The popularity of knitting has grown tremendously in the recent years because of the increased versatility of techniques, the adaptability of many new man-made fibers and the growth in the consumer demand for wrinkle resistant, stretchable, snug fitted garments, particularly in greatly expanding areas of sports wear and other casual wear-segments (Vadhani 2001).

There have been many changes in the knitwear industry during the last few decades. Previously, knitwears used to be processed manually but now-a-days, different technologies are available for producing good quality products in less time to compete internationally. Technological advancements have brought automation and Computer Aided Designing/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems in all the areas of manufacturing including textile and garment industry. CAD is industry specific design system using computer as a tool. CAD is used to design anything from an aircraft to knitwear. Originally, it was used to design high precision machinery but in the 1970s, it made an entry into textile and apparel industry. CAD is increasingly used for colouring printed; knitted and woven fabric designs, creating merchandising presentations and pattern design (Anonymous 2004).

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Unigraphics Solutions unveils breakthrough in CAD/CAM/CAE technology

Singapore, 20 April 2000 - Unigraphics Solutions Pte Limited today announced the local launch of Unigraphics Solutions Version 16 (UG v16), a major new release of its enterprise CAD/CAM/CAE software solution.

UG V16 marks the introduction of what Unigraphics terms Predictive Engineering - a set of technologies that incorporates engineering practices and product life cycle knowledge into the product development environment.

Process Wizards and Process Assistants
Predictive Engineering innovations are pervasive throughout the entire integrated UG V16 application. Predictive Engineering has enabled the creation of a new generation of tools - called Process Wizards and Process Assistants - which encode complex product and process knowledge to significantly improve design and manufacturing productivity.

Studio for design
Predictive Engineering intelligence is further augmented by advanced CAE functionality for structural analysis, parametric shape optimization and dynamic motion simulation. In addition, a process intelligent system for CAM delivers the next generation of knowledge enabled manufacturing applications, while Studio for Design - a new module for industrial designers and stylists - introduces Predictive Engineering to the earliest phase of product design. In all, UG V16 includes 12 new modules and hundreds of functional enhancements throughout the entire suite of design-through-manufacturing applications.

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