iLogic system reduces design-to-production timescales

Ian Crum, General Manager of Halifax Fan, states: "Almost every industrial business needs a fan at some stage." Halifax Fan is a manufacturer of industrial centrifugal fans, known for their quality and reliability - "the Rolls Royce of the fan world' is how they have been described. The company is currently reducing its design-to-production timescales, with the help of manufacturing design reseller and consultant, Symetri.

Although demand for a product and its quality obviously both help in putting a business ahead of the game, there is more to winning than just this. Like many thriving companies, Halifax Fan is always pushing the boundaries of its technology and processes, constantly finding new ways to reduce delivery time and offer a more competitive product.

Halifax Fan has been designing and manufacturing its products since 1965. Its range extends from the simple and relatively inexpensive to complex models for the most demanding of environments. All are bespoke, engineered for optimum efficiency within a customer's exact performance specification.

The company's designers are long-term users of Autodesk Inventor 3D digital design software and have worked with Symetri for "years and years", according to Crum. Yet, as he explains, the relationship has not always been as "hands on" as it is now.

Around three years ago, Crum attended one of Symetri's annual conferences and realised that he could use the reseller's expertise to do so much more. Symetri is Autodesk's only Platinum Manufacturing Partner in the UK, is a member of Autodesk's developer network and an Autodesk consulting services partner. It has also recently achieved Simulation Specialisation status from Autodesk. In other words, its engineers are experts in digital design and allied technologies for the manufacturing industry.

There was one particular challenge that Crum had in mind. It was taking the team 8-12 hours to process a design and issue it to the shop floor. If the customer wanted to make amendments to the general arrangement (GA) drawings, this time could be doubled. With the cost of design time averaging around 40 an hour, the overheads were adding up fast.

Crum says: "At that time, some of our smaller competitors, who have lower overheads, were getting a foot into the market with low-cost fans. Their customers were then returning and asking for more sophisticated models. Consequently we knew that we had to keep manufacturing smaller, straightforward fans as well as larger models to keep hold of the market. Although a 300 or 400 overhead doesn't matter quite so much on a 50,000 fan, it really cuts into the margin of a 1,000 model."

Cost was not the only issue. The design to manufacture process was leaving little time for the research and development needed to keep the company innovating and moving ahead in the future.

Minutes rather than hours

Working with Symetri, Crum identified the solution as iLogic rules-based technology. iLogic is an integral part of Autodesk Inventor but, at the time, Crum and his team had to tailor it with the help of Symetri. Crum says: "They helped us to understand how to link it into Inventor and how to write the logic behind it. Symetri's support is ongoing, with one of its engineers regularly working with us on site helping the developer."

The system takes information directly from a quotation and feeds it into iLogic. Rather than taking hours and hours, within minutes it has produced all that is needed for customer approval and then for production.

As well as helping Halifax Fan's UK operation, the system is also helping improve accuracy and accelerate productivity at its factory in China. Crum says: "It helps us to control our costs, but to also keep all our intellectual property here in the UK. Because the team in China can take the information and use it quickly, without our support, it helps them be a little bit more self-sufficient and we can be confident they are using the correct data.

"Because we only started the Chinese operation a few years ago, inevitably we have had to spend time making sure everything was running smoothly out there. This has meant we haven't been able to concentrate so much on new product development. However iLogic has taken the pressure off and freed up our engineers to continue with their research and development projects."

Colin Watson, Corporate Director at Symetri, believes that rules-based systems are the next logical step to design automation: "Until recently these were only available with considerable overheads for mainstream business using IT consultancy. iLogic is lighter and more straightforward, yet it can reduce sales cycles dramatically." Autodesk has included iLogic rules-based technology in its Autodesk Inventor portfolio, and is now developing Autodesk Engineer-to-Order to distribute the design logic into an easy-to-use distributable interface for use in the sales process.

Meanwhile, it's clear that Halifax Fan has made huge leaps in productivity through its relationship with Symetri. Crum says: "Their knowledge has been extremely helpful and they are easy to work with. We have actually pushed them a few times with our questions and they have had to go away and find something out. However, they always come back and deliver."

To find out more about the potential for rules-based systems in improving manufacturing productivity, visit the Symetri website.