Hi all,

Curious how others handle this. When someone wants to automate part of the design process (a configurator, auto-generating CAD models, building BOMs automatically), how do you decide if it's actually worth doing?

One rule of thumb I use: if you gave the same order to two of your engineers, would they come up with the same design? If yes, you can probably turn it into rules. If not, the process usually needs sorting out first.

A few other things I check:
- Does the product change all the time, or is it fairly stable?
- Do you get enough orders for variants to make the setup worth it?
- Is there one person in engineering who owns the design rules?
- Is the BOM and part data clean, or is it a mess?

In my experience, these projects rarely fail because of the software. They fail because the process wasn't settled before anyone started automating it.
What do you look at before automating? And if you've had one turn into a maintenance headache, what should have tipped you off earlier?

Thanks!

 

Your two-engineers test is a good one. Another check is whether the exceptions can be written down: if most orders fit the rules but a steady share still needs manual changes, it helps to decide up front whether those go through the configurator or get handled outside it, otherwise the rule set keeps growing to cover one-off cases. It is also worth asking who will update the rules when the product changes, because a configurator that only one person can maintain tends to fall behind the actual design quickly.