The EAC Product Development Academy can help you advance your career, improve department performance, and transform the way you design your products. Our training options (shown below) can turn a great designer or administrator into an expert!

1. Take Our On-Site or In-Center Courses

Our Certified Instructors can come to you, or your students can come to us. We’re flexible! Let us sweat the small stuff. Our training coordinators will arrange for all the necessary tools including laptops, course material(s), and software.

2. Sign Up for eLearning

Are you a self-starter that prefers online training on your time? eLearning® a solution from PTC might be perfect for you. Students can access full course material on PTC’s subscription based learning management system. Every subscription includes up to 6,000 hours of customizable self-paced training content, including training exercises and skill checks. It is a great option for customers to track the progress of their employees as they go through onboarding or training.

3. Remote Learning with EACLive!

EACLive! is EAC’s proprietary remote learning offering. It allows students to reduce travel expenses and still satisfy their training needs. Students access classes remotely and maintain the classroom experience through desktop sharing and two-way communication with instructors and other students. It is available for both our public training classes and private sessions for your company.

4. Mentoring

We also offer this unique training option. Students can also choose to mentor with one of our Certified Instructors. This allows students to address specific topics in which assistance is needed and develop specific skill sets in the context of their job.

5. Configured or Customized Training

If you feel like “out-of-the-box training” doesn’t quite fit your needs you can utilize the EAC Training Department to help create a unique training path. We will work with you to accommodate your time and knowledge through configured or customized training.

Configured Training allows the student to subtract or add modules from an out-of-the-box certified PTC Academic Program Course; combining or shortening current curriculum.

This training type gives the student access to:

• Add and Subtract Module(s) from a Course
• Access Customized Printed Training Manual

Customized Training allows the student to build their own training course specific to their needs and their environment.

This training type gives the student access to:

• Add and Subtract Module(s) from Course
• Custom Course Content Development
• Custom Training Delivery
• Custom Documentation
• Integrate Images from Customer Environment
• Recorded Training Videos

EAC Product Development Solutions (EAC) is proud supporter of STEM education and fostering the development of future engineers. This is why we are excited to announce a partnership with the Lakeville South High School (LSHS) STEM Academy.

The STEM Academy at Lakeville South High School began as a pilot program during the 2013-14 school year. At the time, it had two sections of Engineering Your Future 1. Today it has six sections of Engineering Your Future 1, four sections of Engineering Your Future 2, and one section of Engineering Your Future 3. The demand for these courses has risen significantly in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, 50 of the 200 students in the STEM Academy are young women.

The goal of the STEM Academy is to prepare students for STEM careers, whether they head straight into the workforce, enroll in a technical college, or pursue a four-year college degree. Lakeville Area Public Schools have recognized the ncreased demand for STEM careers, in turn increasing the demand for STEM classes. STEM jobs are growing faster than jobs overall in Minnesota, more than twice as fast as all industries in Minnesota according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

EAC offers many products and services to help companies improve the way they design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products. One of the ways we do this is through the sale of the product development software toolsets created by PTC and ANSYS. EAC has pledged to donate 1% of all engineering software and support sold in MN to the LSHS. We will also make an equipment donation to the STEM Academy valued over $20,000. The school will receive a Bridgeport CNC Mill and a 3D Systems Printer.

EAC’s donation will supplement funds for supplies and equipment coming in 2016-17 that voters approved in their levy referendum in November of 2015. This includes programming at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels.

“The pieces of equipment are instrumental to state-of-the-art STEM education. Given the expense, such purchase might not be possible without the generosity of partners such as EAC,” said Justin Just, STEM teacher at Lakeville South High School.

Jacob Stewart, Senior at Lakeville South High School said throughout his four years in the STEM Academy the biggest things he has learned were “being able to work in groups and [thinking] outside the box. There’s no one right way [to solve a problem]. Failing is a big part of improving and learning.”

Stewart plans on studying engineering next fall at Iowa State University. The opportunity of working with and learning from state-of-the-art equipment may have given Stewart and his classmates a competitive advantage over their peers.

Another LSHS Senior, Will Duncan said the experience of building 3D printers has opened up future career possibilities that he might not have considered. “My dream job is to make prosthetics for people who don’t have the technology or resources to make limbs. 3D printing or other efficient technology could make that a possibility.”

In an effort to expand the awareness and success of this program EAC also plans to create a mechanism for their customers to donate additional funds and support to the program by “opting in” when placing an order.

“I want to be intentional in our efforts to support local students and schools. Some people say STEM is big right now. I say it is big for our future. Today’s students are doing amazing things. They have amazing ideas. And the staff at LSHS is doing a fantastic job preparing these students to impact the engineering and product development world. I’m proud of this program. Not only does it support a great school and great students; it also reflects EAC’s dedication to its customers. Not only do we want to provide great product development technology and services. We also want to make sure that local companies will be able to recruit talented individuals in the near future and for years to come,” said Thane Hathaway, President & CEO, EAC Product Development Solutions

Program Details:

• This is a new program EAC is launching in MN
• EAC pledges to donate 1% of Engineering Software and Support sold in MN during 2016
  • Minimum 2016 cash donation of $5000
• $20,000 hardware donation
  • Bridgeport CNC Mill
  • 3DSystems Printer
• In addition to a minimum cash donation and percentage of sales, EAC will provide a mechanism for customers to donate directly by “opting in” when placing an order.

Learn more about Lakeville South High School’s STEM Academy here.

In 2015, PTC created a new award to celebrate one of the most significant, and often overlooked roles in the entire PTC ecosystem. The award honors an instructor that consistently exceeds expectations, elevates the reputation of the Authorized Training Partner network, and delights students. Jeff Fulciniti, Senior Director North America Interim PTC University, presented The PTC University Instructor of the Year award to its premier recipient January 6^th, 2016.

This award was given to Joel Cartwright, one of the 138 eligible instructors across all of PTC Americas business. “PTC has a vast ecosystem of very well regarded partners and instructors. Some with substantial years of experience and product knowledge that could simply not be replicated,” said Alister Fraser, Authorized Training Partners and Academic Programs, Americas, PTC.

Joel’s passion for education, product expertise, and un-matched client-facing skills has allowed him to thrive throughout his tenure in the PTC and EAC ecosystem. Joel loves to meet new students, welcome previous ones, and consistently impart the educational tools allowing individuals to improve their own position and skills.

“The instructors at EAC, and Joel specifically, are critical to the value EAC provides its customers. Effective instruction on the technology allows our customers to innovate and optimize without software getting in the way,” said Thane Hathaway, President & CEO of EAC Product Development Solutions.

When asked about what this award means to him, Joel responded, “The Instructor of the Year award stands for many things. It starts with PTC’s commitment to quality within their software options, their Learning Management System (LMS), and the instruction manuals we use in class. The entire PTC University community tries very hard to uphold quality. Here at EAC my fellow instructors and I take educating our customers very seriously. Our standards are very high and I am truly honored to receive this award and recognition.”

A number of factors contributed to selecting the award recipient. Members of the PTC University staff evaluated instructor certification and course mastery scores, student evaluations of course content and customer satisfaction, the volume of students trained, and the number of courses taught by an instructor.

For more than 15 years Joel has been a front-runner in most, if not all, of the award criteria and 2015 was no exception. He has been a full-time PTC Certified instructor since 2000 and joined EAC Product Development Solutions in 2004. Cartwright delivered an astounding 70 classes during 2015. That’s an average of more than one per week. Despite this high volume and a nearly perfect certification record he maintained the highest overall customer satisfaction score among all PTC Americas instructors.

Joel explained that the key to success is simple. He treats all of his students with the same respect, eases them through struggles, and makes them excited to learn more.

“For a large majority of our end users, an instructor might be the only person from PTC they interact with throughout their entire CAD or PLM career. The instructors in our network are very often the public face of PTC. They carry on their shoulders our credibility as a company and the perception of our solutions depends in large part on the experience customers have with their instructors,” said Jeff Fulciniti, Senior Director North America Interim PTC University, PTC.

“I am incredibly proud of Joel. I don’t believe there is a more worthy recipient of PTC’s Instructor of the Year Award. It’s good to see that his demeanor, professionalism, expertise, and consistent focus on creating value for the students does not go unnoticed. Joel is dedicated to staying on the leading edge of product development education. This is why students ask for him by name. I’m honored to have him on our team,” said Hathaway.

Recently I had an epiphany. It wasn’t the kind of epiphany that changes a life forever and drives someone to become a monk in the Himalayas, but it was an epiphany nonetheless. It had to do with collaboration, data management, reporting, and the way many of our customers inevitably deal with their customers.

For the sake of this blog I’m going to oversimplify the “discrete manufacturing” industry into two categories: Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and OEM suppliers. Many of our customers supply larger companies. This puts our customers in a unique situation in which they operate their businesses within other people’s timetables. They operate their internal projects within larger projects managed by the end customer. This is where things can get tricky, but I digress…

I was grabbing lunch with a couple friends, colleagues, and long-time engineering veterans when the conversation veered into oncoming traffic. A simple question, “Does anyone have any meetings they need to get back for?” opened up a new line of dialogue. One of the engineers referenced a late afternoon meeting and started talking about the time they waste on redundant meetings with their internal teams and the end customer. Throughout any given week they have status meetings, update meetings, and check-ins on the updates and statuses. Everyone is always trying to stay on top of expectations and progress and it seems like it’s, well, getting in the way of progress!

The other engineer sympathetically chimed in because they both felt the same pain and frustration with the overhead of trying to GSD (Get $#!+ Done!). Throughout the conversation, phrases like “they didn’t hire me to attend meetings” and “I wonder if anyone is adding up how much these meetings cost?” were thrown around. I couldn’t help but think there had to be a better way…in fact, I knew there was a better way. You can dive in and learn more about Knowledge Worker Management and Time Boxing here, but for now I’m going to focus on the tools that can help GSD.

Nowadays the acronyms PDM and PLM have become common terms in the engineering and manufacturing world – Product Data Management and Product Lifecycle Management. These tools can relieve some of the frustration. If a company uses a tool like PTC Windchill to collaborate with customers and internal teams, they can set milestones, see real-time reporting based on work states, and manage changes easily and within clearly defined workflows. They can help provide answers to questions without needing to interrupt the engineering staff.

If you give us a call and a few minutes we can help you understand the return on investment in a legitimate PDM/PLM tool (something other than file folders and shared drives). We can help you figure out how much time and money PTC Windchill can save you – hard numbers that help the bean counters sleep at night. But, it is important to remember there are tangible benefits to improving your collaborative space that go beyond cycle times and promotion requests. Investing in a PDM or PLM tool can free up time for engineers to get back to engineering. An engineer’s lunchtime conversation should focus on the amazing innovations they’re working on. It shouldn’t focus on frustrating meeting-itis. Engineers aren’t cheap. Let’s get them back to work and out of redundant meetings. I think tools like PTC Windchill can help do exactly that.

Some people say that selecting a CAD tool doesn’t matter. I’ve heard the analogy that CAD is like a hammer…it doesn’t matter what hammer you use, it’ll probably drive a nail and get the job done. I don’t agree. I think selecting the right tool can change, improve, and even revolutionize the way you work, design, and innovate.

Case and point – Augustine Die & Mold Inc. A while back Augustine Die & Mold Inc. came to us with a goal. They needed to improve collaboration on customer’s part designs and plastic injection mold designs. There was also an initiative to adopt a single platform for all their CAD, CAM, and CAE needs.

We worked with the Augustine team and mapped out that PTC Creo Parametric and a few advanced options and extensions would give them the functionality they needed in one consolidated package. We recommended PTC Creo Parametric as the core CAD technology and suggested the addition of the PTC Creo Parametric Tool Design Option (TDO), the PTC Creo Parametric Flexible Modeling Extension (FMX), and the PTC Creo Parametric Expert Moldbase Extension (EMX).

Augustine evaluated our recommendation and decided to implement the new CAD/CAM/CAE toolset. What was the outcome you may ask? They saw a 50% reduction in design cycle times. 50%! Having every designer, engineer, and technician using the same PTC Creo suite made the tool design process faster and easier with unprecedented levels of interoperability.

It matters what tools you use. Sometimes you can’t look at it like a hammer vs a hammer. Sometimes it’s a hammer vs. a nail gun. Don’t take my word for it. A senior engineer at Augustine Die & Mold Inc. used to use Solidworks and had this to say. “I started my career using SolidWorks, then I switched to Pro/ENGINEER which is now Creo. Creo Parametric, in my opinion, is the best CAD software available. I have noticed recently that files created in Solidworks tend to have solid modeling issues and make it difficult to design to the solid models needed. The reputation and performance that Creo has definitely surpasses any other software on the market.”

You can’t argue with that. Next time you’re considering how to complete more projects in less time..consider giving us a call. PTC Creo Parametric might be exactly the tool you’re looking for.

Creating Ideal Translation Workflows for Optimum Results 

In Part Two of this post on coupling products for translation, we’ll discuss the specific steps that are required to implement complete translation projects – from managing technical content objects to managing costs and file collaboration. Refer to Part One for the overall solution design which shows the strengths of PTC’s Translation Manager, Windchill ProjectLink, workflow, reporting, and multi-lingual publishing and how they can be leveraged for translation.

The Process 

There are six process components to the overall translation solution. The process starts and ends with PTC’s Translation Manager. Windchill ProjectLink is nested in the middle of the process to facilitate the business project, cost collaboration, and file transfers with Translation Service Providers.

Step 1. Designate Objects for Translation 

The first step of the process begins with source content that is ready for translation to the target language(s). The content is stored in Product or Library folders in Windchill/Arbortext Content Manager. Here the project owner identifies complete document structures or document objects to be translated. A translation work package is created for the objects. The Translation Service Provider and target language(s) are designated with the creation of the translation package. Languages and Translation Service Providers are configurable.

At the completion of this step, the content is prepared for translation. It results with a collection of XML objects to be translated in a zip file. The source objects are set to the In Translation lifecycle state and the source content continues to be managed in relation to other content and states.

Step 2. Create Translation Project 

In the second step, ProjectLink is used to create a translation project that contains any business-related activity required for traceability. This activity includes deadlines and due dates, assign internal resources to the project, and expose the project to Translation Service Provider(s) or other external users outside your firewall. Any cost information, such as Requests for Quote and quotations received can also be stored under the project.

To start, the translation zip package is posted to the project. From here, the package is available for workflow and lifecycle activities as well as for collaboration with Translation Service Providers. If a process for approving translation costs is required, the cost approval workflow would be executed on the translation package stored in the project. Providers will be able to see the source content in order to estimate the level of effort and designated project participants can see cost approved or not approved activity.

Step 3. Route Objects for Translation 

This step in the workflow is for actual translation activities. Here Translation Service Providers can:

1. Checkout and Download the package when it is ready to translate and
2. Checkin and Upload the package when the work is complete.

This activity makes use of the translation package on ProjectLink so that collaboration with users outside your firewall can work on the project. The user interface is self-serving and provides traceability out-of-the-box. The zipped file is automatically iterated and historical versions are maintained on checkin so that everyone on the project is aware of the project status. Users can schedule alerts to immediately know when a critical threshold is reached. Therefore having the lifecycle states in ProjectLink enables real-time reporting on activities to show key performance indicators. Is the project on time? On budget?

Step 4. Route Translated Collateral for Approval 

The approval workflow activity in step four supports reviewing translated content delivered by the Translation Service Provider. Reviews may be performed by local native language review teams or it may include users that have other roles on the project. This activity uses the translation package on ProjectLink so that collaboration for users inside or outside of your firewall can continue to work on the translation. As a result of this workflow, updates can be made either by the Translation Service Provider or by home team members.

Once the translation is approved, the translation project can be concluded and all ProjectLink activities closed. Even so, an organization may still elect to store invoices and final cost information in the project for matrix reporting and future planning purposes.

Step 5. Store Objects in Translation Library 

After objects are translated, the final translation zip package is returned to the Translation Library where XML objects and images are stored. Here the translated target objects are bound to specific revisions and iterations of source objects for each language. For clarity on object status, objects are marked “Translated” or “Translated, Ready for Publish”.

When the objects are returned to Windchill/Arbortext Content Manager they can be published, updated, and iterated just like any other object. This is important since changes may be necessary to:

1. validate the markup;
2. facilitate aesthetics for publishing;
3. change product names, service marks or other marketing decisions;
4. change dates or other metadata.

Step 6. Route Assembled PDF Document for Approval 

In an environment with shared document components, status checks are necessary to verify that all objects included in the document are ready for publishing. This is a key element of the process since some objects may be In Translation, others may be at earlier iterations with no recent updates, or they could be universal images that require no translation. When all objects in the translated document are Ready for Publish, the published document is created, and routed for review and approval. This may be the first time that a translated document is being reviewed as a whole, thus it may be the first time that all content is reviewed relative to the content around it. At this point, it is expected that any changes made during this stage would be made by the home team for content stored securely behind the firewall.

The document review and approval process should be the same as your usual published document review process with different resources for languages. Documents can contain a single language or there may be multiple languages per document depending on the style guidelines for your organization.

Summary

For anyone that has been involved in the translation process, you can likely sympathize on how complex and challenging the tasks can be. By putting ProjectLink to work in your translation process, it does not have to be the case. With PTC’s Translation Manager and Windchill ProjectLink, workflow activities can be more transparent, helping to streamline the translation process across all documents and languages that need to be managed. If you have questions about how ProjectLink, Translation Manager, or multi-lingual publishing solutions can be integrated into your organization, be sure to contact the EAC Product Development team from the links below.

Learn More

Be sure to read Part One of this post to learn more about the solutions being deployed in the workflow being described.