The Emerging Release-to-CAD Milestone

Release-to-CAD: The Milestone Between Engineering and

Documenting Products

Chad JacksonFounder and President

04/13/2023

Context for the Conversation• National Bureau of

Economic Research declares Recession over in June 2009

• But manufacturers are not hiring back… getting aggressive with current staffing levels

• New products, not cost controls are the path to profitable growth

Slide #2engineering-matters.com… published by…

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Implications for Engineering Dep.

The End of Engineering’s Black Box Era• The CEO wants to be

more involved in product development

• Increased focus on innovation for competitive differentiation

• Increased visibility into product development operations

Slide #3engineering-matters.com… published by…

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Implications for EngineersTough Times for Engineers• Almost every

development project is understaffed… holdover from the recession

• Product issues that get downstream have quality of life issues… not just more busy work

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Two Sets of Development Activities

Engineering a Product• Activities to explore

iterations that impact a product’s form, fit and function

• The purpose is to gain enough understand of the trade-offs in these options to make design decisions

Documenting a Product• Activities to create the

deliverables unambiguously define the product

• The purpose is to provide a definition to downstream roles such that they can manufacture the product

Slide #5engineering-matters.com… published by…

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Cultural Fit of Release-to-CAD• Engineering is built on

an accountability culture

• Leads to conservative nature of engineers in the department

• Informal hand-off from engineers to designers exists

• Engineers try to delay this while gaining knowledge about their decisions

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When do you Release-to-CAD?

Checklist• Most major

engineering decisions finalized

• Most major manufacturing decisions finalized

• Some validation and verification that the product concept works

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Release-to-CAD Milestone

• Some manufacturers are formalizing the handoff between these two sets of activities into a Release-to-CAD milestone

• In terms of process change, its not disruptive as it represents what’s already happening culturally within engineering

• The peer precedent to Release-to-CAD is the Release-to-Manufacturing milestone

Slide #8engineering-matters.com… published by…

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Tools for Engineering Fall Short

Feature-History CAD difficult for engineers• Engineers with

lifecycle responsibilities can’t dedicate significant time to any software

• Skill and knowledge requirements too high

• Change tolerance is very low

Direct Modeling CAD is promising• Doesn’t require

knowledge of how model was built

• The interaction paradigm has low overhead in terms of skills and knowledge

• Change tolerance is very high

engineering-matters.com… published by…

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