Lessons to be Learned from GM’s Fall

If one of the biggest and best companies in the world can fail, is anyone safe? The short answer is no. But, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the demise of General Motors.

David Schwinn is a full-time professor of management and worked at both GM and Ford. Professor Schwinn presented an insightful article for QualityDigest.com that explained what lessons could be learned from the GM experience and how those lessons can help other companies, even those not nearly as large as GM.

Ford revolutionized the auto industry in 1908 by listening to what the consumer wanted when they introduced the Model T – an inexpensive car in a time when many Americans couldn’t even consider buying a car. By the 1930s, consumers want more and GM listened. They offered styling, features, and choice. GM grabbed the industry lead and kept it for the next 70 years. As the leader, GM became complacent and not as quick to listen to consumer wants. In the 1970s, Japanese automakers challenged the industry leaders with superior quality. GM was slow to catch onto the quality game. When you’re the leader, it’s harder to learn.

So, what lessons can be learned from GM? GM was an example of learning at its best in their early years, but the quality of that learning waned over time. GM forgot to keep learning and it cost them dearly. I’m reminded of the quote about those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Companies that fail to keep learning, that fail to keep innovating, run the risk of becoming irrelevant and losing whatever lead they may have once enjoyed.

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Laser Scanning Solutions: Gilbert Engineering's Story

As previously discussed, Laser Scanning technology is transforming both forensics and surveying and appears to be a near-revolutionary game changer. Micky Gilbert, founder of Gilbert Engineering, is no stranger to forensic work. Gilbert is one of the top experts in the country, and his company has been surveying and reconstructing accident scenes for more than 10 years.

“When an attorney needs an accident reconstruction,” said Accident Research Specialist Doug Yanda, “we need accurate measurements. At scenes, we’ve been using total stations for the last few years to document critical points. At a rollover, this would be things like scratches, even shallow scratches, yaw marks, impact points and debris that police don’t pick up.”

Working with a total station was necessarily cumbersome, and required searching for small marks in the roadway and taking separate shots of each. Since Gilbert Engineering crews typically arrive on the scene 12-18 months after the actual accident, it is not always obvious which marks are important. Laser scanning has changed that, offering two significant advantages: 1) Scanning gathers everything, even shallow gouges, so scene specialists don’t have to worry about missing anything during the scene survey, and 2) The scanner works quickly so you don’t have to decide which evidence is significant to gather at the scene — you can just gather it all!

Scanning is being adopted at a steady pace in most sectors of engineering, but in the narrow niche of forensic measurement it appears to be a near-revolutionary game changer. One big reason is that the sheer mass of data gathered, which is viewed as something of a handicap by many surveyors and engineers, is a nearly indispensable advantage for those trying to ferret out the reasons for a collapse, a rollover, an explosion or other catastrophe. And once you’ve had access to all the data you’ll ever need, it’s hard to go back — especially when your opponent in a courtroom may well have access to all that data as well. At a trial, the side with the best information is likely to win the day.

And the indisputable advantages of scanning, speed and accuracy, are also a big help in this high-stakes field. It seems that this new technology has already become an indispensable component of the forensic scientist’s toolkit.

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3D Measurement Supports Space Exploration

With Monday’s 40th anniversary of man walking on the moon, we are reminded how far we have all come. And while Americans were the first to walk on the moon, it was an achievement for people from all over the world – it was a time that united us all.

It’s sad to think that there are only 8 more space shuttle missions and that we’ve completed 126. So what’s in store for the space program? If you haven’t already heard, it’s what NASA’s calling the Constellation Program. It includes the Orion Crew Vehicle and the Ares Launch Vehicles.

Making its first flights to the International Space Station by the middle of the next decade, Orion will send human explorers back to the moon, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the solar system. Future astronauts will ride into orbit on Ares I, which uses a single five-segment solid rocket booster, a derivative of the Space Shuttle’s solid rocket booster. NASA’s first test flight, called Ares I-X, will provide NASA with an early opportunity to test and prove the hardware, facilities and ground operations associated with the Ares I crew launch vehicle. Data collected will begin to confirm the vehicle as a whole is safe and stable in flight before astronauts begin traveling into orbit.

If there was ever a product that required high accuracy, space vehicles definitely qualify. NASA Langley Research Center, located in Hampton, Virginia, is facilitating the buildup of the Ares I Crew Module, the Launch Abort System and the Separation Ring Assembly. With the high accuracy requirements when building these items, the Research Center has turned to laser tracker technology. Laser trackers are recognized in the aerospace industry for their portability, ease-of-use and their ability to achieve extremely high accuracy levels. The demand for this technology is continuing to increase as people realize how integrating laser trackers into their processes increases accuracy, facilitates build routines and provides real-time data acquisition. For Ares I-X, the FARO Laser Tracker is an integrated part of the fabrication process to assure the accuracy of the final product.

It’s exciting to follow the progress of the Constellation Program, and it’s reassuring to know that the parts are being inspected by the latest measurement technology. But until this program is up and running, we’ll watch with pride as the last 8 space shuttle missions remind us of how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.

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Benefits of Adaptive Reuse

We recently posted a story to our website detailing how a client used laser scanning to prove that a historical fire station could be renovated into a residential dwelling, while preserving the historical integrity of the structure. This project is a classic case of Adaptive Reuse – a term that is gaining great exposure due to its relation to federal and state government Green initiatives.

For many service providers and engineering firms, Adaptive Reuse can provide a source for rejuvenated business interest. What is Adaptive Reuse, and what benefits are leading to positive implications for the construction industry as new construction has slowed?

Adaptive reuse involves taking an existing building and repositioning its function. There is a popular misconception that this only involves historic buildings, but contractors experienced in adaptive reuse have made effective modifications of buildings that are only a few years old.

Federal Government Incentives
For adaptive reuse projects involving historic buildings, developers often tap into a federal tax incentive program known as the historic rehabilitation tax credit. This program generates a credit that directly reduces taxes rather than offering a tax deduction such as depreciation, which reduces taxable income. Commercial property owners who choose to renovate their historic buildings and follow certain historic preservation guidelines are eligible for a federal tax credit equaling 20 percent of the cost. A 10 percent credit is available to non-historic commercial buildings more than 50 years old.

Local Government Incentives
City governments such as Rochester and Buffalo, NY are following in the footsteps of Los Angeles, where they successfully implemented the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance in 1999. The program is run by the City of Los Angeles and coordinated by a multi-departmental effort through the Office of the Mayor, the Department of Building and Safety, and the Fire Department. The departments work as a team to quickly move projects through the design, permitting and construction processes.

The program consists of two components: a set of land use ordinances which relaxes typical zoning requirements, and adjustments to fire and life safety measures which provides flexibility in the approval and permitting process.
Less Waste (and Cost) of Construction Materials
This benefits the contractors and developers, as well as the environment. By leveraging existing building materials, the Adaptive Reuse incentives can save developers as much as 20 percent on construction costs. That also means that the resources and energy that were once used to create these structures are not squandered.

Older buildings in particular have wonderful bones from a design perspective. They have high floor-to-floor ceiling heights that allow a lot of natural daylight and good circulation. Also, buildings in particular that were built in the earlier part of the century were designed to optimize their performance in what is called the passive state. That is, being able to take advantage of solar orientation and wind and natural ventilation because the reliance on mechanical systems for comfort did not exist.

Benefits to the Local Economy and Quality of Life
Adaptive reuse usually results in lower construction materials cost, but often requires more time in labor. This means that, dollar for dollar, a renovation project will provide more funds to the local work force than a new construction project. This is good news for companies looking to find enough hours to give to loyal employees.

Abandoned buildings and vacant lots drive down property values, create a sense of economic decline and hopelessness, and invite crime. A redressing of this building stock maintains the character of our cities and bolsters our civic pride.

Having created over 10,000 apartments and condo units since its inception, the Los Angeles ordinance is credited as the city's most successful method in increasing housing stock in a short period of time. The program has also saved and brought back into productive reuse an estimated 60 buildings that potentially faced the wrecking ball.

Benefit to Laser Scanner Operators
One of the major arguments against Adaptive reuse is the advisability of planning for reuse when project schedules can suffer due to added design delays or increased burdens on documentation. Laser scanning provides one of the most efficient methods for collecting documentation of as-builts or existing buildings. Three-dimensional and BIM models are easily created from laser scan data, removing the burden placed upon the need for accurate documentation of buildings.

Laser Scanning Boosts Speed of Rapid Prototyping

You have a design vision for a new part, but how do you turn that vision into a physical part that you can then redesign or actually produce? Past methods were very time consuming, especially the more complex the intended design of the part. Rapid manufacturing (RM) is an additive fabrication process where parts are built up, layer-by-layer, rather than cut or milled away. This means that parts with complex geometries can be quickly produced without the limits of conventional molding or manufacturing processes – often greatly reducing design and production time.

Larry Carlberg, the general manager of GKS Inspection Services, presented an excellent article for QualityDigest.com that explained the advantages of not only rapid manufacturing, but of using laser scanning technology to further enhance those advantages. “One-of-a-kind prototypes or models are difficult to digitize quickly, accurately, and cost effectively with traditional contact measurement methods. To compete in our fiercely competitive economy, coupling laser scanning with rapid prototyping is one method of fabrication that can screw the odds of success in favor of its user, slashing days, weeks, or even months from the manufacturing process.”

Non-contact laser scanning is especially well suited for scanning the complex, free-form shapes of many prototype parts and is also ideal for reverse engineering these parts into CAD models. The technology offers a quick, low-cost way of making production-quality parts and is quickly gaining popularity where the first-to-market advantage can mean all the world between product success or failure.

“Quickly moving from complex prototype to CAD model to finished product is the key to competitiveness.”

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Technology Helps Shipyard Increase Efficiency

Last week Virginia’s Daily Press mentioned Newport News’ shipyard has been a “beacon of heavy manufacturing” for more than 100 years. Recently, though, they have identified the need to design and build through the use of new technology. “The process of designing and building a warship has moved away from the waterfront and hand-drawn blueprints into high-powered computers and software engineers. To design state-of-the-art, multibillion-dollar nuclear warships, Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding today relies heavily on technology to drive its research, development and design."

It was stated that the shipyard now has “a small team…to explore new ways to make the shipbuilding process more efficient.” One of the types of technology used to achieve efficiency in processes is portable CMMs. With a portable CMM (generally known as measurement arms, laser trackers or laser scanners) you can take high precision measurements to ensure that parts or components are within defined tolerance levels for quality. By capturing 3D data, a portable CMM will provide you the X, Y, Z coordinates of an object.

These portable devices are typically much less expensive than a traditional, fixed CMM, and their user-friendly software easily produces results. More data is collected and provided than that of traditional measuring devices. With their light weight and durability, they can be transported quickly and easily to allow operation at multiple work sites in varying environments. Laser trackers and laser scanners in particular allow for fast, efficient data capture on large scale objects like those Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding face daily.

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Tips & Tricks: PolyWorks Software | Automatically Extract Nominal CAD Features

In several industrial metrology contexts, users of FaroArm and Laser Tracker devices directly measure features without having access to a CAD model or nominal information. For example, measurement operators could not have access to CAD data for confidentiality purposes. Or, frequent CAD revisions could make it preferable to implement part measurement processes independent from nominal information. In such cases, retrieving the nominal CAD features corresponding to measured features can become a long and tedious operation. PolyWorks/Inspector resolves this issue with a powerful one-click operation.

1) Several features are probed on a part. No CAD information is available at this stage.

2) After measurement is completed, a CAD model is imported.

3) Menu item Feature > Auto-Extract Nominal is selected, and the nominal features corresponding to selected measured features are automatically extracted. Nominal-to-measured deviations are readily available and inspection reports can immediately be generated.

How to Cut Reverse Engineering Time in Half

Antron Engineering and Machine, a leading innovator in the highly competitive contract manufacturing marketplace, specializes in design for manufacturability. Their goal is to improve product design and lower final product costs without sacrificing quality.

Antron is set apart from other firms because of their attention to detail and has become a value-added contract manufacturing partner to the world’s leading OEMs. Some of the many parts that Antron must measure and inspect are irregular and complex parts such as the aluminum crank shafts and motor covers for various style motorcycles. Until recently, Antron was measuring these parts with a traditional fixed CMM. Unfortunately, this CMM was designed more for production use and caused Antron to build part models separately resulting in a very time consuming reverse engineering process.

Always committed to the use of new technology, Antron looked to find a better solution to their traditional CMM. There were several different solutions they looked at, but the determining factor was a product that would directly integrate with SolidWorks® software. They were able to implement a portable CMM that allowed them to reverse engineer and build native SolidWorks models without any intermediate steps. “The time savings we have realized have been a great value to us,” said Engineer Don Clifford. “I would estimate that the FaroArm has cut our engineering time by 50 percent.”

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Manufacturing Tip: Improve Aerospace Tooling Part 4

Tooling for composite aerospace parts is in the form of molds and winding mandrels. Mold making remains something of an art, but digital metrology is turning it more in the direction of science, minimizing trial and error. Let’s take a closer look…

When a toolmaker receives the model of the structure, such as a wing or tail part, they create a virtual tool that includes the molding surfaces. The art comes in knowing how to construct the overall tool so that the mold surface is supported rigidly and will not deflect under the weight of the mass of polymer. Today, mold makers rely on Invar, an alloy with a very low coefficient of thermal expansion. Its thermal stability makes it ideal for B-stage resins that will be cured in an autoclave. The downside of Invar is that it is expensive and difficult to machine, so it is important to avoid machining mistakes.

Molds are comprised of two regions, the solid surface that is in contact with and shapes the composite, and a support structure. Both are crafted from Invar. Absolute rigidity is essential. Once the mold surface is formed, the support structure must be machined so that the off-side of the mold surface perfectly “nests” in and is supported by the structure. Each vertical column in the support structure is like a bracket beneath the molding surface. To get the nesting shape correct, toolmakers use a laser tracker to measure cuts in the structure until the nest exactly matches the underside of the mold.

Few designs ever make it all the way to assembly untouched, but with a laser tracker, modifications do not have to slow down tool development; the laser tracker can be used to position running modifications. By locating a modification such as an extra support bracket or hole with the laser tracker, engineers only have to do it once because positioning is so precise.

Surfaces of molds and winding mandrels are checked quickly with a laser tracker. By sliding the target sphere over critical sections of the tool surface, a technician generates a line of points in the instrument’s computer, not just a single point. By covering the region on the tool in a grid pattern, the technician captures the shape of its surface, as a 3-D point cloud. Comparing this to the surface CAD file instantly tells tool developers where and how much the surface needs to be modified.

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