Industrial Design has always been an important element of successful product development. Aesthetically and functionally pleasing products are important to customer perception and ultimately may add to increased acceptance and improved sales.
The Engineering Services Group at EAC Product Solutions solved such an industrial design challenge for a valued customer, Bob Barker Company, Inc. Bob Barker is America’s leading detention supplier and maker of the Vancell, which is a prisoner transport unit that is installed in commercial vans. They approached EAC to create a successor, which ultimately became the Vancell Elite.
Bob Barker wanted the new version of the Vancell to fit newer, redesigned van models. At the same time, they requested upgrades to several user features. They wanted to incorporate design elements to differentiate the redesign of the Vancell from its competitors. The redesign was required to invoke feelings of ruggedness, strength, and security.
With those challenging requirements, the Designers in the Engineering Services Group started by selecting diamond plate panels for the exterior of the access doors to elude to the element of ruggedness. The diamond shaped patterns were then carried through to the ventilation cutouts in wall panels for continuity of theme. A new logo, designed by Bob Barker Company, was added to the access doors as well as laser cut sheet metal brackets. The bracket was painted black with another bracket behind painted orange for a bold, three-dimensional look. A small Bob Barker decal was placed nearby to increase brand awareness. The Designers also added chrome paddle latches and bright screw heads to accent the diamond patterns and create a sense of security.
Next, a new base color was needed for the exterior of the unit. The competitor’s prisoner transport unit was painted a sterile white that easily showed dirt and wear. The old Vancell was painted a dull gray. Bob Barker Company wanted to set themselves apart from both of these units with a bold and dynamic color. Using CAD models created in PTC Creo, the Designers rendered images in different colors to help the company determine which color was best. A medium matte blue was selected.
Upon agreement of design features and colors, manufacturing drawings were released to a third-party fabrication shop. The prototype of the first transport unit was completed in time for display and demonstration at a large trade show. The Marketing and Sales team at Bob Barker Company were excited about the appearance and function of the completed Vancell Elite and confirmed that it met their requirements — rugged, strong, and secure. They also received many positive comments from prospective customers at the trade show.
The VanCell Elite difference is not only through its new and improved design, but it’s features as well. The VanCell Elite provides improved visibility for greater officer security through controlled viewing, PREA compliant segregation compartments, and an enhanced 4 Camera Viewing System and optional DVR upgrade.
Learn more about the VanCell Elite here.
If you have industrial design or engineering project, the Engineering Services Group can step in and mentor you throughout your design process or act as your engineering team. The innovative engineers and designs can help realize your ideas and transform the way you design your products. For more information, contact us here or learn more about our Design and Engineering services here.
While I’d like to think I’m a good storyteller and an artist, I’m pretty sure I’m not ‘awesome’ at either. That’s one more reason to pay attention to Augmented Reality (AR) these days.
As an engineer and a designer, I frequently find myself trying to explain a widget, a feature, or a design to someone. Often this takes lots of hand-waving, white-board markers, and innumerable sketches. This got better over time with improved drawing skills and communication techniques. It was even better still when I could put a physical model in someone’s hands by using a 3D printer for rapid prototyping. Well, things just got a lot more interesting when we started using AR through ThingWorx Studio to do virtual prototyping.
While I spend most of my time designing business strategies for the IoT and connecting products using ThingWorx as an IoT platform, the AR portion of ThingWorx is simply fun to use. One great way to employ the tool is to super-impose streaming data and information directly onto the product while looking through a mobile device. AR Prototyping, on the other hand, is the ability to superimpose alternate designs into the real world through a mobile device such that you can experience a design as it was intended. The kicker is that you can whip together a couple dozen designs, review them virtually — in person or remotely — and have a fabulous understanding of the design in less time than it takes to print even one prototype.
In the video below we’re playing with the app ThingWorx View by PTC. Watch this model of a motorcycle come to life with Augmented Reality (AR). We’ve used this technology for virtual prototyping. For some of our customers we are able to swap in and out CAD models to virtually prototype new designs and configurations.
So, if you’re like me and you want to convey a design idea in a hurry — even faster than a rapid prototype — you should really look into AR Prototyping. This has sliced-bread beat no problem.
If you want to start virtual prototyping, ask us how here! We’d love to help you transform the way you design and connect to your products.
In the last few weeks I’ve discussed the benefits and costs of customization. This week I will review deciding whether to customize or not. If you missed these posts, you can read them here:
So how can you weigh the benefits against the costs of customizing? If we examine the criteria outlined above, a general pattern emerges, which provides the key insight in making this decision:
Benefits mainly go to end users, and costs mainly go to developers and administrators.
Installations with large user bases, where the value of customizations can be maximized, are good candidates for customization. Also, organizations that have dedicated staff for maintaining the Arbortext system will have an easier time managing customized installations than organizations where maintenance and development is a part-time task for staff with other responsibilities.
In organizations that have a small number of users, it will be difficult to realize enough value in customizations to make it worth the expense of implementing them. In these instances, it makes sense to stick with a mostly out-of-the-box installation using a standard doctype like DITA or DocBook, possibly with some stylesheet adjustments to get the desired output appearance.
Consider standard features first.
With all software, you can get the most value from your investment if you maximize the use of its standard features. If you are new to the software or perhaps not leveraging everything the software offers, you should explore the best practices and benefits first to determine if customization is truly needed. With Arbortext, PTC recommends an implementation approach called “Value-ready Deployment” which leverages the value of Arbortext using standard features and recommended best practices to maximize the value to each customer before any customizations are made.
Also consider prepackaged add-ons.
EAC offers several prepackaged add-ons which add capabilities to the Arbortext platform at a lower cost than a customization. Users should be able to create aesthetically pleasing Operator Guides, Service Manuals, and Parts Catalogs quickly while providing an easy way to style documents that fit your brand. If you decide to investigate customizing Arbortext for your environment, EAC can help you explore your options with a variety of prepackaged add-ons, training, and implementation services.
Transform the way you design and publish product information. Looking to publish faster, cheaper, and better? Explore our technical publication services today.
In my last post, ‘The Benefits of Customization,’ I told you I would review the cost of customization in my next post. If you missed it, you can find it here:
Of course, the benefits of customization don’t come without some associated costs. Here are some examples of the cost of customizing PTC Arbortext:
Development Costs
The most obvious cost is the cost of initially developing and testing the customization code. This will vary based on how extensive the customizations are. Also, don’t forget to keep maintenance costs in mind. Bug fixing, adding new features, and adapting customizations to changing requirements all require additional investment.
Version Lock-In
When you develop customizations, you generally work with a specific version of Arbortext. Depending on how extensive the customizations are, there is a chance that some part of the customization will break when you upgrade your Arbortext software to a new release version. In that case, you have two choices: either spend the resources to update the customization for the new Arbortext version, or commit to remaining with an out-of-date version of Arbortext to keep your customizations running.
Proprietary User Skills
With customization, you will need to take user training into account. For new features that don’t come out-of-the-box, you will have to develop your own training and support materials, and make sure your end users are up to speed on how to use the new features. In addition to the direct costs, this can also make recruiting new staff more challenging. There is a lot of DITA expertise in the marketplace, which you can leverage if you are using standard DITA. But if you are using a custom doctype and customized Arbortext Editor interface, you may not be able to get the same advantage from potential employees’ previous experience with XML editing or with Arbortext.
Technical Support Complications
PTC’s tech support staff know the base products quite well, and can help troubleshoot problems with out-of-the-box installations pretty quickly. However, with a heavily customized environment, troubleshooting can be more challenging, for PTC tech support as well as for yourself. In some cases, it may take extra time to determine whether a problem is due to a bug in the base Arbortext software, or something wrong with your customization code, or some kind of interaction between the two. In some cases, PTC’s advice for resolving the problem may boil down to “remove the customization.”
EAC has created a tool to help eliminate some of these costs allowing you to publish faster, cheaper, and better. QuickPubs is an EAC product for PTC Arbortext that removes the cost of development and provides a user-friendly interface.
While Arbortext comes with some publishing capabilities right out of the box, most users will acknowledge that they often need to customize the document stylesheets to meet their publishing standards. Customizing the stylesheets isn’t difficult, but it often requires prior training or hiring someone with the appropriate skilled and experience, both of which have an impact to turnaround time and cost. EAC has packaged attractive stylesheets for Operator Guides, Service Manuals, and Part Catalogs into QuickPubs so you can publish manuals that look as good as your products from day one. Should you need to modify the document stylesheet, QuickPubs also offers an easy interface to customize the style layout and formatting with a few clicks.
Stay tuned for the next post where I will discuss things to consider when deciding to customize or not. Want to learn more about how you can publish faster, cheaper, and better? Explore outsourcing Technical Publications in our blog.
This is part one of a three part series regarding PTC Arbortext, deciding whether to customize or not. In this series, we will discuss the benefits of customization, the costs of customization, and deciding whether to customize or not.
You’ll often hear of DITA in the technical documentation world. DITA stands for ‘Darwin Information Typing Architecture’ -it’s an XML-based open standard for structuring, developing, managing, and publishing content. Quite the mouthful huh? What you need to know about DITA is that it leverages XML to be used as a way of writing and storing your data so you can manage it like an asset. What does it have to do with PTC’s Arbortext? PTC was the first company to ever deliver a complete DITA solution – one where organizations can finally start to maximize their investment in service lifecycle management.
One of the most fundamental questions you have to face when considering an Arbortext implementation is whether to use the technical documentation software out of the box or develop customizations to adapt the software to your specific use cases and work processes.
In practice, this is not so much of an either/or decision, as a how-much decision. In other words, nearly every implementation has some amount of customization, even if it’s just tweaking a composition stylesheet to add your own appearance specifications to the composed output. For some applications, where one of the standard doctypes such as DITA or DocBook is adequate, that’s all you need. For other applications, you may want to add custom features, user interface elements such as toolbars and custom dialogs, a tailored doctype or schema to support specific data requirements, connections to other enterprise systems such as ERP systems, and so on.
Adapting Arbortext software to your specific business environment can provide a number of advantages. Here are some examples where customization can add value to your implementation:
Author Efficiency
Custom features and user interface controls allow the author to work more efficiently.
Example: if authors frequently need to change one type of element into another similar element, then adding a toolbar button and/or keyboard shortcut to trigger the operation can let authors do it with a single click or key press, as opposed to using the Change Markup dialog.
Workflow Integration
Custom integration with software can streamline processes in the workflow.
Example: Suppose you have part data stored in an ERP system, and you are writing support documents associated with the part data. In a stock Arbortext installation, you might need to export the part data as an Excel spreadsheet, and then copy portions of the exported data in Excel to paste into the XML document in Arbortext. In contrast, a customization could allow authors to click a toolbar button, make a few quick selections in a dialog box, and automatically extract, format, and insert the part data in the correct location in the document.
New Capabilities
Customizations allow you to add new features to Arbortext Editor.
Example: Suppose you have a metric that you want to track on your documents that depends on the number of specific elements in each document, such as graphic elements. You can easily add a feature that would count instances of a specific element and report that for a document. You could also generate a report for a set of documents found in a directory tree or a folder in a content management system (CMS). This would let authors get this information directly within Arbortext Editor, without having to switch to an external tool to do the analysis/reporting.
This publishing engine software can be customized in a number of ways, and frequently we see users customizing their stylesheets to make them look better or compliant with their publishing standards. Arbortext stylesheets are used to publish documents that have consistent styling and formatting, no matter who authored the document. Sometimes these stylesheet customizations can be significant and complex, but often we see a need to make simple modifications to the fonts, logos, and page margins. EAC QuickPubs provides users an easy way to make those simple style modifications and create great looking documents.
Stay tuned for the next post where we discuss the cost of customization.
If you’re looking for ways to adapt your environment to fit your organizations needs, EAC QuickPubs may be for you. It’s an add-on designed to style documents that fit your organizations brand at a lower cost than a customization to PTC Arbortext. You can create aesthetically pleasing part manuals, owner’s guides, service manuals and more with ease. Publish fast, cheaper, and better today!
Transform the way you design and publish product information through QuickPubs, an EAC product for PTC Arbortext. For more information about QuickPubs contact us. Publish faster, cheaper, and better today!
I applaud anyone currently considering how the Internet of Things (IoT) can transform their company and their approach to competition. This is what every industrial and consumer product company should be doing right now. While helping companies through the early stages of developing IoT strategies we’ve recognized a common challenge. Teams can get lost in the excitement of enabling their first “thing” and lose focus on their long-term vision and the value they can extract from streaming data. We get it! The IoT is exciting. That is why we always coach our clients to select an IoT platform (software) that allows them to quickly and easily develop applications that present valuable, digestible information to employees and customers – whether or not a role or data stream was part of the initial strategy.
This week provided me with a front row seat to unexpected value from streaming data. While working on an IoT proof of concept for a client, my team was able to refine a data stream and deliver a new application to an audience that was not part of the initial scope of the project. The only reason we were able to create this new application without charging an additional fee is because we selected ThingWorx, a solution by PTC as the application/mashup development tool. Thingworx helps teams create new applications in minutes.
I try to spend the majority of my time working on IoT strategies and how they can transform companies and competition. My background in engineering and software development provides me with a unique view into the time spent making things smart — providing sensor networks, communication layers, and ultimately enabling heretofore unseen analytics in real-time on remote products. The project the Connect Services team and I were working on this week involved developing mashups, which stemmed from earlier strategy work and team alignment. Mashups are the collection and presentation of data from smart things and systems enabling real-time business awareness and decision-making. For this project, we had already developed storyboards for the apps that would enable core product and service differentiation. Everyone was on board and excited.
Once the proof of concept device was wired and streaming data, we saw a whole new role that would benefit from the data that was streaming. Previously, the engineers would have been left hanging and the data would have been left alone and isolated. This is because developing an extra application for ancillary roles would have taken the project well off track. Leveraging ThingWorx as our application development environment, we were able to build a concept from scratch in literally seconds. What’s really cool is that it didn’t take any code at all either, just drag, drop, save, and we were in business. The concept made sense and in literally a couple of hours (not days or weeks) we had created an entirely new app and use case for the data. We were able to refine the data in real-time and create a whole new monitoring experience. Again, this was done without coding, just simply drag and drop.
So, here’s my recommendation — make sure your IoT platform supports your IoT strategy. And what’s more, be sure the platform you select is a tool that is flexible, fast, and fun — like ThingWorx. You will likely find more and more ways to consume, refine, and benefit from the data your connected products and enterprise produce just because it’s easy to do. And this, after all, is what your IoT platform should do — it should enable your existing business initiatives and accelerate your business initiatives.
EAC Connect Services is here to help you develop your IoT strategy, build and connect your proof of concept, and select the appropriate platform. Let us be your partner in the ever-changing world of the IoT. Please let us know if we can help you transform your business and help you beat your competition.
