CAD automation and CPQ solutions play vital roles in industrial manufacturing. The increasing demand for ongoing product development and customized industrial machinery across the aerospace, automotive, and defense sectors are primary growth drivers of the global CAD market, with a growth forecast of US$ 13.4 billion by 2028.
Medical device manufacturing also significantly benefits from CAD and CPQ, optimizing various aspects of product development and sales processes. While CAD automation facilitates the design and development of precise, innovative, and compliant medical devices, CPQ streamlines sales by configuring complex medical devices, determining pricing, and generating accurate quotes.
CAD automation and CPQ enhance efficiency, accuracy, and compliance, allowing manufacturers and production engineers to reduce costs, expedite production, and bring innovative products to market.
Learn more about CPQ CAD automation and how it benefits manufacturers.
What is CAD Automation?
CAD or computer-aided design automation refers to the automated creation of CAD models through a configuration process, fostering innovation within engineering teams and facilitating sales efforts with precise product drawings.
What is CAD Automation for Manufacturers?
Manufacturers leverage CAD automation beyond mere digital product modeling. CAD provides a comprehensive understanding of a product’s functions through simulations encompassing dynamics, fluid flow, stress, and vibration analysis. This empowers manufacturers to gain precise insights into a product’s performance and proactively detect and address any issues before the manufacturing phase begins.
The complexity of CAD is mitigated through automation. Engineers initially create the designs, which are then automated, allowing non-engineers to manipulate the product while still adhering to the original design’s standards.
CAD also interfaces seamlessly with cutting-edge technology like 3D printers, facilitating the generation of miniature versions of products. Although these 3D-printed models may not be fully functional replicas of the original, they prove invaluable in the planning stages and minimize the risk of customer dissatisfaction.
Benefits of CAD Automation for Manufacturers
Let’s look at the significant benefits of CAD automation in manufacturing:
Efficient configuration
One of the key advantages of CAD automation is the swift customization of products in congruence with customer requirements.
Traditional product configuration processes follow a sequential path involving the customer, salesperson, sales engineer, and engineer, often leading to time-consuming delays and increased error risks. However, CAD automation streamlines this entire procedure into a single, integrated process, enabling customers to view their product drawings in real time during discussions with your sales team.
Cost reduction
CAD automation centralizes product data in a single source and ensures that all teams work from the same data regardless of their roles in the production process. Centralized access to data reduces the cost of errors and returns, thereby minimizing claims expenses.
Accurate designing
The accuracy of CAD drawings is unrivaled, with an almost error-free performance, making it a superior choice for design and drafting.
CAD creates intricate surfaces and complex shapes with relative ease. Achieving such precision and complexity manually through sketching is challenging, but CAD systems’ tools ensure a flawless outcome, providing manufacturers with a significant advantage.
Sales improvement
One of the notable advantages for manufacturers is that CAD integration can expedite the sales process significantly.
With CAD models readily accessible, sales associates can swiftly customize products. The implementation of CAD automation empowers sales associates to efficiently craft custom products within hours rather than the days it used to take, streamlining the sales workflow.
Enhanced collaboration
Manufacturers stand to gain a significant advantage from CAD automation through enhanced collaboration. When both engineering and sales teams are involved, CAD automation facilitates the rapid creation of superior product designs.
Moreover, CAD automation is a versatile tool for sales and engineering tasks. It enables teams to redirect their efforts towards higher-value work. The result is increased collaboration, productivity, and error reduction.
Automation of repetitive tasks
CAD automation is a valuable asset for manufacturers, as it efficiently conserves time by automating repetitive design tasks and processes. It allows manufacturers to liberate their design engineers from monotonous responsibilities and channel their efforts into more productive endeavors.
Whether it involves architectural design, product development, or system engineering, CAD automation proves highly effective in automating repetitive tasks, thus enabling engineers to concentrate on higher-level assignments.
What is CPQ?
CPQ stands for “Configure, Price, Quote.” It streamlines the process of configuring intricate product offerings, provides personalized pricing, and generates quotes efficiently. CPQ empowers sales teams, partners, and customers by codifying product and pricing information, enabling them to create accurate and customized quotes quickly.
As a result, CPQ accelerates sales processes and elevates the customer buying experience. CPQ unifies complex product and pricing data, making it readily accessible for real-time collaboration and ensuring consistency in pricing and quoting across all sales channels.
Benefits of Using CPQ
Here’s what manufacturers gain from leveraging CPQ:
Efficient organization
Integrating CPQ software with your CRM system brings substantial organizational advantages to manufacturing.
The seamless integration streamlines operations by eliminating the need to input data separately into each platform, thus saving time and preventing redundant entries. This facilitates rapid access to critical information for sales personnel, ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of quotes.
Enhanced accuracy
CPQ, or quoting software, offers manufacturers a significant benefit by automating the pricing process for configurable products.
This automation eliminates costly errors that can jeopardize valuable customer relationships. By removing the necessity for manual calculations, CPQ saves time and mitigates risks, ensuring more accurate and reliable pricing.
Reduced pressure on sales teams
For manufacturers, CPQ offers a remarkable advantage by automating the administrative tasks associated with pricing and quoting.
Automation liberates sales executives from time-consuming tasks, allowing them to direct their efforts toward more impactful activities. Hence, sales teams can concentrate on lead generation, prospecting for new clients, nurturing existing customer relationships, negotiating deals skillfully, and closing sales.
Enhanced Collaboration
In many traditional manufacturing setups, sales, engineering, and shop-floor operations rely on disparate data and systems. This leads to a breakdown in alignment and fosters poor communication, creating frustration among teams.
With CPQ, manufacturers gain access to a unified, authoritative source of information accessible company-wide. It bridges the gaps between departments, facilitating better coordination and synergy.
Robust data management
CPQ systems offer manufacturers a notable advantage through their robust data management capabilities. These systems empower businesses to efficiently gather, store, and analyze data from sales, engineering, and shop-floor operations. This heightened visibility translates into data-driven insights regarding customer behavior, preferences, and market trends.
These insights can be harnessed to enhance the efficiency of sales and marketing endeavors, allowing manufacturers to tailor their approaches more effectively. Additionally, CPQ aids companies in identifying and optimizing deficiencies within the engineer-to-order workflow, ultimately leading to a more streamlined and productive manufacturing process.
Conclusion
The issues without CAD automation are multifold. Without CAD automation, everything is labor-intensive, error-prone, and inefficient — from designing to engineering processes. Similarly, without CPQ, sales processes suffer from errors, delays, inconsistencies, and limited scalability, impacting revenue and customer satisfaction. CAD and CPQ implementation empowers manufacturers to innovate, compete, and thrive in a dynamic market where efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction are paramount.
Are you ready to leverage the potential of CAD automation in niche medical technology and product engineering?
CADVision is your ideal partner for transitioning from traditional manufacturing to 3D printing, allowing you to cut production costs and shorten market times. Our software solutions integrate 3D CAD modeling technology seamlessly, enabling real-time collaboration, simulation, and testing.
Get in touch with CADVision today!