The Challenge
The Inspire Design Group is a full-service
product development firm that is based on three core competencies:
industrial design, mechanical engineering and prototyping & model making. The Middleton, WI based company faces
three primary challenges, as do most design engineering firms:
communicating with clients, maintaining an educated staff
of
innovative engineers, and aligning with best-in-class companies
for engineering tools and services.
The Solution
By partnering with Computer Aided Technology, and adopting
SolidWorks as its primary CAD platform, Inspire Design has
tackled its three main aforementioned challenges.
“Since our clients drive what we do and determine what
engineering tools we use, we use SolidWorks most often for
product engineering,” said Inspire Design Principal
and Chief Design Officer, Doug Birkholz.
Birkholz added that as SolidWorks continues to dominate the
3D mechanical CAD industry, he cannot help but recognize it
as the industry standard. He said that SolidWorks even gives
him an advantage in terms of new business sales.
“When I’m making a sales call, and the prospect
asks me what solid modeling platform we use, I can say SolidWorks
and that’s one less objection that I have to overcome,” said Birkholz.
Inspire Design abides by a unique philosophy called “Inspirevation™.”
That’s a combination of inspiration (their clients’
ideas and concepts) and innovation (Inspire Engineers’ creative expertise and technical abilities). Birkholz said
using SolidWorks helps them communicate better internally
and to the customer, and deliver highly innovative designs.
“SolidWorks is ideal for helping engineers develop their
CAD skills. It’s much more user friendly than other
systems,” Birkholz said of his team that consists of
4 engineers, 2 industrial designers and 2 model makers. “If
we want to reverse-engineer a full model, we are able to do
that and capture the form very accurately with SolidWorks.”
Birkholz also added that partnering with CATI has kept him
and his company at the forefront of the engineering community.
With a desire to become more involved with local SolidWorks
Users Groups, and to learn how to better utilize SolidWorks
within their organization, Birkholz is an avid reader of CATI’s
TechLink Newsletter.
“I find it to be a very valuable resource,” said
Birkholz. “I like reading about what other people have
done with their SolidWorks software, how they’ve incorporated
it into their business. It gives us information that we most
likely would not come across on our own.”
SolidWorks is ideal for helping engineers develop their
CAD skills. It’s much more user friendly than other
systems.
The Summary & Metrics
Using SolidWorks, the Inspire Design Group created a garage
storage product called the “Flip Clip®.” From
concept to manufacturing, Birkholz and business partner Jim
Boda, noticed a need in the marketplace for such a product,
and turned their own inspiration into true innovation. The
FlipClip® (flipclipstorage.com) is now being distributed
and sold at various retailers, including Ace Hardware, True-Value
and Target.
By using SolidWorks for projects like the Flip Clip®,
Inspire Design has enjoyed the following benefits:
Better communications with our clients and their suppliers
“We’re able to create CAD models of a concept
and then send an e-drawing of the part to our client for review.
Their engineers and marketing people can see the design direction
the project is taking. Making changes easier at this point
is much less expensive than modifying the tooling.”
Reduction and even elimination of opportunity costs
“In a highly competitive marketplace, timing is everything.
Having the right product with the feature/benefit package
their customers are looking for can mean the difference between
getting the sale and reaping the benefits or missing a window
of opportunity.”
Faster time-to-market, faster time-to decision
“SolidWorks is a tool that allows information to be
shared with the entire group. Buy in on a product concept
is done earlier and less time is spent on costly revisions
done later in the product development
process.”
