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Outsourcing draft work?


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#1 MatsNorway

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Posted 25 August 2015 - 14:11

So i had the idea to outsource the draft work on our designs. And i think you guys might have experiences and good info on this.

 

Let us hear it. I contacted a Indian firm. I actually consider that safer than Asian/China companies. But thats just a gut feeling based upon their past history with remote customer support to US etc.


Edited by MatsNorway, 25 August 2015 - 14:11.


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#2 Greg Locock

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Posted 25 August 2015 - 20:58

Be prepared for an enormous waste of time.

 

I had built a beam element FEA model of a stiffened ladder frame for a 55 Tbird.  That is, I has specified the section sizes, and the hardpoints of the end of each straight section etc.

I needed someone to turn it into a CAD model suitable for meshing, but since I was flat chat doing my day job decided to sub it out over the internet. The quotes I got back were mostly from India.

 

It rapidly became apparent that at the bottom end they were just kids who had been 'taught' a CAD package, who I would then have to teach how to model, and at the top end they still had no bloody clue about vehicle or component design either, and wanted 40 hours. I did it myself in two evenings, but had the advantage that I knew what I wanted and understood the job exactly in advance.

 

The problems with remote working are not insuperable, I have worked on many design projects with Germany and Japan and Thailand and the UK, the problems with language are trickier, but we work with China all the time, admittedly with some very good bilingual people who are paid at the same rate as we are. I think overall the cost save from outsourcing CAD to a cheap place is marginal, at least for Australia and the USA, and I specifically think there are cultural problems with trying to do it with Indian staff. You need to find someone who knows your industry.

 

In the past SAAB and Volvo took enormous numbers of CAD guys from the UK, they can't all have gone home?



#3 bigleagueslider

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 04:26

Do you really think outsourcing drafting work to a company using workers having minimal experience in your industry is a wise decision? A skilled CAD operator located in your own country will likely provide better value.



#4 MatsNorway

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 07:28

I would have to give them complete models. They just need to slap on a ton of dimentions. Set out Positional numbers. Set up detail view when they feel it is needed. Then i go over. Add toleranses and adjust when needed. Layout work/paper work is mostly a ton of labour. The tricky part is about toleranses and some is about where you set the dimentions from.

 

You guys sure made me think twice about it! damn it, i thought i was solving all our problems here.



#5 Greg Locock

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 08:23

Time to get your little black book out - who could do this who has recently retired from your company or its suppliers? If it's only a short term issue then that will minimise your overhead.



#6 MatsNorway

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 10:40

No no we do not have that big projects and delays. (heh..)  It was more of a thought that i decided to check out. I will send them documents and see what they say.



#7 Joe Bosworth

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 11:05

Mats

 

I have had the experience of managing a design review for a very major industrial plant for which a high level Indian engineering firm carried out detail design.

 

To protect myself from legal consequences I will not provide further identification.

 

My review team found many areas that did not meet standards usual for that industry.  Worse was the digging it took to get the designers to admit to their problems.  My experience would not allow me to recommend going that route.  Not the least problem is the expense of setting the standards that must be met then the time to check the work.  Any apparent savings will disappear IMHO.

 

You need to make sound estimates on the total cost of various alternative suppliers of services.  Unless your job is going to burn many thousands of design hours you need to keep the work within your easy travel distance.  If lower labour costs are really important consider mid cost countries such as the Philpinnes.  They are easy to communicate with and their educaation/experience levels are quite good.

 

Regards



#8 MatsNorway

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 12:50

What i do is far simpler and smaller in terms of grasping and putting down on paper i think. My idea here is down to just doing the labour of putting out all the dimentions and showing all the parts and the assemblies in a understandable way for the machinists here in Norway to understand. I think it might be worth a try one day. You guys all have bigger more intricate projects.

 

They will not have to deal with tricky standards as much. Im assuming basic things like european projection method, senterline style and marking holes is a known thing for them to do ok. But it is still a lot of clicking around when you have 50 parts and hundreds if not tousands of details and assosiations.



#9 blkirk

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 13:01

I would have to give them complete models. They just need to slap on a ton of dimentions. Set out Positional numbers. Set up detail view when they feel it is needed. Then i go over. Add toleranses and adjust when needed. Layout work/paper work is mostly a ton of labour. The tricky part is about toleranses and some is about where you set the dimentions from.

 

You guys sure made me think twice about it! damn it, i thought i was solving all our problems here.

 

We have done exactly that with very poor results.  The drawings had many missing dimensions and poor tolerancing not to mention misplaced dimensions and bad view choices.  If it all possible, I would advise you to start small.  Give them a sub-assembly with 5-10 components.  Go over their work carefully.  If it's not at least 95% correct, move on to another company.  Do NOT give them a 300+ piece main assembly to start.  You will end up spending more time checking and correcting their work than if you had done it yourself.



#10 Fat Boy

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 17:01

So i had the idea to outsource the draft work on our designs. And i think you guys might have experiences and good info on this.

 

Let us hear it. I contacted a Indian firm. I actually consider that safer than Asian/China companies. But thats just a gut feeling based upon their past history with remote customer support to US etc.

 

Ya, the last thing you'd want to do was pay a qualified professional to do a good work for a reasonable agreed upon wage.



#11 Greg Locock

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 20:01

Well to be fair the Indian engineers (don't bother with Indian non engineers) would claim to be qualified and professional, and in my experience some are. I suspect, as happens in China, that one you get a good qualified engineer who can work with Westerners then the pay advantage rapidly diminishes.

 

The other thing to watch for is substitution - you may meet the company's rock star team when they are bidding for work, but within a year they will have rotated to the next new bid and your work will be done by pimply faced graduates at the same rate. That is not a problem unique to India by any means.



#12 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 00:13

While I do not fully understand the exact story a friend of mine has at times as a contractor ' interpreted' European  plans into a form that Australian Engineers can build cars by. Evidently they are drawn in a different format to what Australian manufacturers are used too.

So I suspect that too may be a problem.

My experience too with Indian proffesionals is that they are quite pig headed, it is their way or nothing. Often they are quite smart, sometimes arrogance gets them in trouble too!

 

A little off this subject, my metalurgist cousin was going to spend a year or so in China before he retired. He went to where he was going to work,, and said no way!

The Chinese and Indians factories have a bad reputation for tendering to make product, having a full understanding of what and how to make the product then trying to cheat or worse farm the jobs out to less well equipped contactors who cannot cast/ forge, machine product to actual specs.

A few major manufacturers have had this happen. 

Though reputedly the Chinese mostly have newer, better equipment to do the jobs than local contractors here in Oz.

I have seen a few examples. And at least some vehicle and equipment recalls have been caused by this.



#13 bigleagueslider

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 03:47

What i do is far simpler and smaller in terms of grasping and putting down on paper i think. My idea here is down to just doing the labour of putting out all the dimentions and showing all the parts and the assemblies in a understandable way for the machinists here in Norway to understand. I think it might be worth a try one day. You guys all have bigger more intricate projects.

 

They will not have to deal with tricky standards as much. Im assuming basic things like european projection method, senterline style and marking holes is a known thing for them to do ok. But it is still a lot of clicking around when you have 50 parts and hundreds if not tousands of details and assosiations.

If you really want to reduce the NRE costs associated with engineering documentation, why not adopt a reduced dimension format? I do contract design for aerospace companies in the US, and almost every one of my clients uses reduced dimension format for their engineering drawings. The only things defined in the drawing views are non-standard tolerances and flag notes. Everything else is controlled by the digital part model. Doesn't take long to produce an engineering drawing using this approach.



#14 MatsNorway

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 06:40

I like that Big L. We have been discussing it in the past. 3D models for instance might in the future have no PDF attached to them. Right now most have out of formality towards the customer who is severely outdated when it comes to documentation systems.



#15 Wuzak

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 09:21

If you really want to reduce the NRE costs associated with engineering documentation, why not adopt a reduced dimension format? I do contract design for aerospace companies in the US, and almost every one of my clients uses reduced dimension format for their engineering drawings. The only things defined in the drawing views are non-standard tolerances and flag notes. Everything else is controlled by the digital part model. Doesn't take long to produce an engineering drawing using this approach.

 

How well does that work with QA?



#16 Canuck

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 16:14

If you run a CMM on your incoming QC inspection, that probably works just fine.

#17 Greg Locock

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 22:59

Presumably you still have to explicitly call out significant and critical  characteristics explicitly?



#18 bigleagueslider

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 02:18

Presumably you still have to explicitly call out significant and critical  characteristics explicitly?

That's exactly right. With reduced dimension format drawings there are usually a couple general notes that define a global scheme using a profile and position tolerance for all undimensioned features based on a datum reference frame shown on the drawing. Any other dimensions/tolerances that are outside of what is defined in the general notes must be explicitly called out on the drawing views. The same goes for things like surface roughness, finishes/coatings, QA/inspection requirements, etc.

 

Some companies take the concept a bit further and use "Model Based Definition", where there are no drawings created. All of the information required to produce the product is embedded in the digital CAD file. I've had experience working on one large aerospace program a few years back that attempted to transition to this type of system. But it created so much disruption between engineering and manufacturing that they quickly abandoned it and went back to using reduced dimension format drawings.



#19 MatsNorway

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 13:58

We have a standard for non spesified toleranses in our titlefield. We can alter between rought medium and fine. (losely translated)

 

I have on my private time experimented more with pure CAD files direct to 3D printer. And it has been hickups that normally get cought during the paper prosess. So i have actually made PDFs of my own designs just to be my own quality check.



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#20 Greg Locock

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 19:20

Matts, do you have a formal checking procedure, or even checkers?



#21 MatsNorway

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 21:47

Define formal. I made a checklist that is in the firms.. official documents/ work guide system with a description of the prosess we are supposed to go through/can use for each drawing/product.

 

We do not have dedicated checkers no.

 

A controller(most suited collegue for the spesific design and also is a engineer) gets the checklist after main engineer is done with it and stops when he/she finds error. Points it out and main engineer fixes. Then he/she checks it off when we have come to an agreement

 

When controller is happy we both sign and scan the checklist.. I then usually dump the pdf in the folder for the design/product/project.


Edited by MatsNorway, 01 September 2015 - 07:42.


#22 bigleagueslider

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Posted 01 September 2015 - 05:59

Here's the basic problem I've seen with using a true "model based definition" approach. For example, with CATIA V5 there is a tool called "FTA" (Functional Tolerancing and Annotation) that you use to embed non-standard tolerances and flag notes in the 3D CAD model. But it requires the manufacturing people to be able to use CATIA V5 to extract this data, which is not practical. Otherwise, it requires an additional software that can convert the embedded data to a .pdf format that they can easily view or print. Which is basically the same as having a digital CAD drawing.

 

Personally, as a design engineer I find it difficult to do a thorough job of checking using just digital models. I think it is well worth the time and effort to produce conventional engineering drawings due to the reduced potential for mistakes.