The Art of Product Design: Changing How Things Get Made by Meybaum Hardi

Author:Meybaum, Hardi...
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2014-04-22T17:07:46.280000+00:00

In phase 1 of the Challenge, their team received 697 submissions from 56 countries, most of them from engineers outside the aerospace industry. That alone would have impressed them. Where we got to the mind-blowing stage was when they realized that not one but more than a dozen of the submissions achieved weight savings of 75 to 85 percent. Even better, they realized that by applying this learning to every component in the engine they could reduce its overall weight by up to 20 percent. Consider this against what one GE employee told me: that they regularly spend billions of dollars to achieve single-digit reductions in engine weight.

So a weight savings of 20 percent really represents a quantum leap. In fact, weight is such an overriding concern that people at the airlines sit around thinking about ways to get the change out of your pocket before you board. Maybe that’s how they came up with all their innovative ways to nickel-and-dime us.

Our GE friends were so excited they took the news all the way up the very steep ladder to GE’s board of directors. And the board said, “Move forward with open innovation.” To that, I say, “Praise the board, and pass the innovation!”

In fact, GE got so excited that shortly after the results came out, when Thomas Friedman, the famed columnist of the New York Times, toured GE’s research center, they boasted about it to him. And that prompted Friedman to write a September 14, 2013, column “When Complexity Is Free” (www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/friedman-when-complexity-is-free.html?_r=0) that said:

Example: There are parts of an aircraft engine—hangers, brackets, etc.—that are not key to the engine, but they keep it attached and add weight, which means higher fuel costs. So GE recently took one bracket—described the conditions under which it worked and the particular function it performed—and posted it online under the “The GE Engine Bracket Challenge.” The company offered a reward to anyone in the world who could design that component with less weight, using 3-D printing.

“We advertised it in June,” said Iorio. Within weeks, “we got 697 entries from all over the world” from “companies, individuals, graduate students and designers.” G.E.’s engineers culled out the top 10, and they are now being tested to determine which is the lightest that conforms to G.E.’s specs and can be built on its printers. I saw one prototype that was 80 percent lighter than the older version. The winning prize pool is $20,000, spread out across 8 finalists, with awards ranging from $1,000 to $7,000 each. A majority of entries came from people outside the aviation industry.

The only problem with Friedman’s account is that GE did not issue the Challenge to “anyone in the world”; it was to anyone in the GrabCAD community. But, hey, we are happy to get the word out about the power of open, so let’s not quibble.

The bottom line is that the leader of the pack has spoken. GE has validated open engineering, and that means it is no longer the preserve of disruptive upstarts.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.