Design Power Corporate Overview (December 2000)
A Spreadsheet Simple Solution For Mass Customization
In today's competitive business environment, companies that can rapidly produce products that meet precise and ever-changing customer specifications have a true competitive advantage. Design Power, Inc. provides a "spreadsheet simple" software solution that gives manufacturing organizations the power to automate the design of custom-engineered products. However, unlike ordinary product configurators, Design Power applications do more than just select from a pre-defined parts list. They actually engineer new parts to optimize product design on the fly. These Engineer-To-Order (ETO) applications automate the creation of technical drawings, 3D models, manufacturing documents, and price quotes, resulting in:
- Faster delivery
- Optimized design
- Reduced errors
- Accurate, design-based proposals and cost estimates
- Improved customer communications
With Design Power applications, there is practically no limit to the complexity of the products designed, and visualization with 3D models ensures both customer and vendor that the design is right the first time. When linked to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) systems, Design Power applications automate front-end supply chain loading for business-to-business commerce.
A Decade of Experience
For a decade, Design Power, Inc. has provided knowledge-based work-process automation solutions to companies in the manufacturing and construction industries. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, the company was founded in 1990 with its earliest products derived from work in artificial intelligence at Nokia Corporation. Design Power works with software integration partners in the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan and Korea. With a track record of highly successful implementations, these partners provide enterprise-wide deployment of Design Power engineering and workflow process applications worldwide.
Products and Services
CustomWise™
CustomWise is an engineer-to-order configurator for Web-based sales automation, which automates the design of complex products, creates visualizations, produce technical drawings and generate risk-free proposals over the Web. The software application is targeted at sales professionals who need to create valid custom designs of complex products and systems. After CustomWise is tailored by product experts to support essential design objectives, sales representatives can input customer requirements, including engineering specifications and physical constraints for instant engineering-to-order.
PlantWise™
The PlantWise product suite is an ETO application for optimized process plant design. It speeds conceptual design and routes piping automatically enabling accurate material take-offs and visualization at the front-end of a project. It is a contract-winning tool for engineering procurement contractors such as Fluor Corporation, Black & Veatch, and Toyo Engineering. And it has been shown to reduce costs and speed projects for owner-operators such as Bayer AG, and Axiva AG. The PlantWise suite includes applications for the rapid generation of both 3D models and 2D drawings.
Design++™
Design Power software products are driven by a powerful knowledge-based software engine called Design++, which is also used in custom applications. It is a scalable, open platform that makes instant ETO and mass customization feasible for both simple and highly complex products. It supports a methodology that puts knowledge-capture into the hands of product experts, not software engineers. For instant visualization of design concepts and collaborative engineering, it provides tight links to popular computer-aided design (CAD) systems such as MicroStation and AutoCAD,
Running on Windows 2000, Windows NT and UNIX platforms, Design++ interfaces with ODBC compliant databases and includes APIs for C, C++ and Visual Basic (COM/API). In product design applications ranging from electrical motors, to metal buildings, and plant floor layouts, this open architecture enables links to manufacturing, PDM and ERP systems.
Design++ implementations provide ETO solutions that improve quality, shorten time-to-market and increase profitability for companies such as Robertson Ceco Corporation, Monsanto Enviro-Chem, Emerson Motor Company, and British Steel.
Services
Design Power and the company's integration partners work closely with manufacturing, engineering and construction organizations to assure robust software applications and streamlined work processes that meet the needs of sales, engineering and manufacturing groups. The company provides the tools, training and support to put in-house teams in control of their own automated solutions with the ability to continually evolve and extend functionality.
Markets
Design Power applications automate the creation of design-based proposals, cost estimates, technical sales and manufacturing documents, and drawings and models for complex engineer-to-order products in a variety of industries. The company specializes in ETO product configurators for:
- Process Plants
- Metal Buildings
- Electrical Motors
- Process Equipment
- Capital Goods
- Electrical Equipment
- Electrical Systems
Key Personnel
The Design Power team includes more than 20 software engineers and industry experts, committed to creating advanced ETO solutions. Key Personnel include:
Ulf Strom, President and CEO - Ulf Strom has been the president of Design Power since 1991. Before joining Design Power he held management positions at Measurex Corporation and was instrumental to a company turnaround at Finlux, Inc., a flat-panel display manufacturer. He holds an MSEE degree from Stanford University.
Tapio Karras, Vice President of Research and Development - One of the original founders of Design Power, Tapio Karras has extensive software development experience working at companies such as Nokia and Scema Oy, in Finland. He holds an MSCS degree from Helsinki University of Technology.
Scott Reed, Vice President, Sales - Before joining Design Power, Scott Reed worked in knowledge engineering and sales at Combustion Engineering and Prescient, Inc. He holds MSME/CE degrees from the University of Connecticut.
Craig Howard, Director, PlantWise Products - Previously an assistant professor at Stanford University, Craig Howard joined Design Power in 1995. He holds a PhD (CE) from Carnegie Mellon University.
