Consumer Products
Designing and making products for a consumer market is a unique challenge. Perhaps more than any other industry, ergonomics and cosmetic appearance are as (or sometimes even more) important than pure functionality of a product. You’re working with a variety of components and a wide range of materials, from injection-molded plastic to stamped sheet metal. Consumer supply chains are international, and it’s rare for suppliers and manufacturing facilities to be located near where the designs are created.
Rapid prototyping and multiple design iterations are the norm before getting a product to market. Clear communication from the design phase onward is critical to reduce prototype failures and ensure that the production and assembly of parts goes smoothly anywhere in the world. Using GD&T streamlines prototyping because it’s easy to adjust and tweak the design in the ways you need.
Whether you’re making automated gelatin shot dispensers, furniture, or chainsaws, using GD&T is how you can guarantee 100% assembly. Once you’re manufacturing a mature product, you’ve built redundancy into your supply chain to ensure you can get the parts you need to build the high volume of product the market demands. The precision and clarity GD&T provides opens up tolerances for suppliers and makes it easier to manufacture parts that will fit.
We’ve worked with a variety of consumer product businesses, including La-Z-Boy, Keurig, Kodak and Boosted Boards. No matter what sort of product you’re making, we know that you’ve got to design intuitive products that are built to take whatever abuse consumers can dish out. We also know that GD&T can not only guarantee assembly, but provide guaranteed limits of reliability as well.
The GD&T Basics program is unique because it doesn’t just teach students what they need to know of the ASME 14.5Y standard. Our instruction also provides them the context necessary to understand how the part will function, and how it’ll be made, tested and inspected. Knowing the context of an entire project helps your people communicate with suppliers and clients – so they can avoid many problems, and quickly solve the ones that do occur.
Our online coursework combined with live training is tailor-made to teach your people how to communicate concisely and effectively using GD&T. We can customize our training to incorporate your drawings and the subset of GD&T applicable to your business. And, we’re happy to work with you to build a training program that both fits with your schedule and maximizes the effectiveness of your entire design and production process.
Contact us today and we’ll work together to build your team’s perfect training program.