Customer References - HauserHAUSER PUSHES DESIGN ENVELOPE WITH ERGONOMIC FREE-FORM SHAPESWritten by P.J. Heller in May 1994 At S.G. Hauser and Associates, the shape of the future is taking on a new shape. And the company's clients in the medical, consumer electronics and computer industries are all benefiting by the new look provided by Hauser, one of the nation's leading industrial design firms. "We're pushing the design envelope," says Ron Pierce, vice president at the Calabasas, Calif., firm. "We're designing and creating products that would have been impossible in the past. "We're able to design products that have more ergonomic forms -- to be more user friendly -- yet we can still do them in a cost-effective and time-efficient manner." Those capabilities account for a growing "who's who" list of clients worldwide who are seeking out S.G. Hauser for their projects. It also accounts for the numerous national and international design awards garnered by the company as well as an annual sales growth rate that tripled in the last five years -- and which shows little signs of slowing.
Much of that success is due to the 3D solid modeling system that the company recently installed. In addition to new design flexibility, it is also speeding the entire design process by anywhere from 33 percent to more than 65 percent over traditional methods. And in today's highly competitive marketplace, time to market can often mean success or failure for a product. "We're dealing in product areas where technology is advancing extremely rapidly," Pierce says. "The shelf life of the products we design is usually measured in months, not years. That means development cycles have to be cut in order to react faster to market changes and to satisfy the immediate needs of the marketplace. "The greatest pressure we face is that we have X months to get into the marketplace and we have to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible," he adds. "We need to minimize as many risks as possible in the process." Advances in technology, most notably 3D solid design software, are allowing Hauser to achieve those goals today. The best example of how the company is using that technology to expedite the design process can be seen in the Panda computer project. That computer, slated for introduction late in 1994, will break with the traditional design of being another "beige box." Instead, the computer, developed by the Panda Project working in conjunction with IBM and 3M, will feature complex curves and a sculpted design never before seen on a hardware platform.
"Everything about that project was made possible because of Hewlett-Packard's SolidDesigner software," Pierce explains. "The ability of the software to handle complex curves and then take those complex curves and translate them into data allowed us to get prototypes done rapidly, either in stereolithography or CNC right off a computer disk." Although the project was the first to be done using the new solid modeling package, Hauser went from concept to working prototype in just over two months. Manufacturing processes, for example, which traditionally would have taken weeks were cut to days. The aluminum computer base was manufactured by a CNC vendor in just one day -- most of which was spent in set-up time -- compared to previous methods which would have taken at least two weeks, Pierce notes. Hauser officials say that working in solids, they are seeing at least a 33 percent time savings in the design development process -- including testing and evaluating designs -- compared to past efforts that involved building models. They also report a 50 percent speed-up in engineering time in getting material ready for prototyping. Testing the engineering integrity of a design, such as fit and finish which in the past was done with prototypes, is now done on the computer, saving untold hours and days. The biggest time savings, they report, comes in the prototype build, which is 60 percent to 65 percent faster, compared to doing the project using traditional methods. "But the fact is we wouldn't even attempt some of these projects if it wasn't for solid modeling," Pierce says."The Panda project simply could not have been done any other way," agrees project manager Edward Cruz. "The form and aesthetics we were after couldn't have been realized in production if we couldn't generate those compound free-form shapes in the 3D solids program."
Design engineer Vince Razo, who was a key player in the Panda project, says he was impressed by how easy the program was to learn. "We never had any official training," he admits. "We pretty much just sat down and started using it." Razo adds that he was equally impressed by the accuracy of the program. His 3D product models captured complete analytic and free-form geometry, as well as design information such as dimensions, attributes and instructions to preserve design intent. "What we saw on the screen is exactly what we got," Razo says. "The parts we did for Panda were 100 percent, dead-on accurate." Hauser has six CAD seats, three HP9000 Series 720 workstations that run either SolidDesigner, HP's ME30 3D design program, or HP's ME10, a 2D design and drafting package, and three personal computers running AutoCAD. Pierce admits that Hauser was relatively late to embrace computer technology. Prior to computerizing in 1988, for example, the company's designers not only did industrial design, but they were responsible for building models, building prototypes and creating the engineering and production drawings.
"What happened was that the appearance of a product would be determined by the lowest common denominator of the designer's skills," he recalls. "If the designer couldn't build a model that looked a certain way, he simply wouldn't design it that way. Or if a product was too complex to engineer, the person would design that product to be easy to engineer." Today, all that has changed for the 30-person staff, which includes industrial designers, engineers and graphic designers who work at the company, located about 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Facilities include design and model studios, a shop/prototype area complete with lathes, mills and walk-in spray booth, and executive offices. The company was founded in 1966 by Stephen G. Hauser. "Designers now have the freedom to push the envelope of design," Pierce says. "What's made that possible is the fact that engineers now have the tools like SolidDesigner to help the designers take their exotic designs and translate them into manufacturing terms. "In the past, a design like Panda would never have been done because the designer had no way to document what the form was and pass it on to the people responsible for making molds or metal," he says. "Now we have people with powerful workstations and software who can take these very complex forms and easily communicate the nature of those forms directly to tool makers and prototype builders without losing any of the design intent. That's very exciting. It's what's pushing design. "Firms such as ours now have the ability to create shapes that are more appropriate for products," Pierce adds. "We can create products that are more conducive to the human environment. And we can do it very rapidly and very efficiently." Razo says he is excited about the possibilities offered by HP's SolidDesigner. "What we want to do is let the computer take the leading role and design things we can't even imagine," he says. "We want to give it a few parameters and see what it comes up with, then go from there. I don't even know what my limits are." Among the more notable Hauser products: label printers for Seiko Instruments; the Alcon surgical footswitch for eye surgeons; Taylor Made golf clubs; a voice-activated VCR controller; notebook computers for Compaq Computer Corp., luggage for American Tourister and bath fixtures for Interbath. The common thread among those products, as well as others that Hauser has designed, is the focus on the end-user.
"The primary focus of our business and our primary customer is the end-user of any product we design," Pierce explains. "Our role is to be their liaison in the product development process. So everything we do throughout the process of developing a product goes back to, 'how does it affect the user?'"
Those considerations range from the psychological (does the user feel the product is well engineered and of high quality?) to the human factor (how does a person interact with the product; is its operation intuitive?). "In reality, we are probably the only discipline in the product development chain whose main focus is truly on the customer," Pierce contends.Besides the end-user, others, such as the people who will have to service and maintain the product, also must be considered in the product development process, he notes. Then there is the matter of serving the actual clients. "They have their own requirements," Pierce says. "They want to get to market quickly, at a predictable price that they know is competitive in the marketplace, and they want to get there with a high degree of confidence that they will be successful. "We're working on that fine line. If we develop a product that's right for the customer and the marketplace, it's the manufacturer who wins," he says. |