Background: Serial Entrepreneur
Bill Davis is a serial entrepreneur in product design and engineering services. His business interests have included Creation Design which specialised in military vehicle design which he successfully built and sold to Penman in 2011; Subsea Craft which developed a submersible craft for marine and military applications; and Tripbuddy which has developed a trailer-caravan vehicle for the leisure industry.
Problem: Cost-effective virtual verification
In each of these ventures Bill has had the problem of how to verify his designs in a cost effective manner.
The size of the businesses and the cyclical nature of analysis requirements meant that the business case couldn’t be made to hire simulation engineers along with the requisite software licenses.
Solution
Creation Design: Outsourcing Finite Element Mesh Creation
At Creation Bill had an experienced analysis engineer but the volume of work was too much for one person. Instead they recognised that certain tasks could be outsourced to a reliable engineering partner.
By outsourcing non-core competence tasks such as finite element model building which are time consuming and quality critical but don’t require product application expertise, their expensive, expert engineering resource could focus their time on performing the analysis, interpreting the results and giving recommendations to the design team.
As well as requiring that the deliverables were of a high quality and delivered on time it was essential that there was a high level of trust between Creation and the outsourcing agency because of the military applications. Caepro were able to give this assurance based on their experience in UK engineering consultancy.
Subsea Craft: Full Simulation Capability
At Subsea craft Bill didn’t have an analysis capability at all and unlike at Creation with only one product being developed the analysis requirement would be temporary. Based on his experience with Caepro at Creation he asked them to take full responsibility for the analysis. This included buckling and sealing analysis.
Caepro were able to highlight areas of the design which could be improved to meet the requirements and gave the team at Subsea Craft the confidence to produce a prototype for testing.
Success
By outsourcing his simulation requirements to Caepro Bill was able to get a cost-effective solution to verifying his product designs. He could add capability and capacity on an “as needed basis” without having to commit to permanent engineering resources.
Caepro’s industry leading tools and techniques ensured that Bill got an accurate assessment of his designs in a timely manner.
Client Testimonial
“Caepro’s ability to provide quality design and simulation at a low price is very attractive for small companies with limited resources.
Working with Caepro reduced our development costs and time significantly and we could pass on those benefits to our clients.
Caepro’s low costs allowed us to do sufficient virtual verification to have confidence in going ahead with a prototype. Testing bore out the results and recommendations from the simulation,” Entrepreneur, Bill Davis.
Can we help you?
If you think Caepro can help you with your current engineering requirements or you would like to know more about our company and services please call us on +44 1865 809445 or send us an email at info@caepro.com and we’ll get back to you straight away.