From industry experience we know how difficult it is to get projects done by end of year – especially when most manufacturing facilities close on average for two weeks during the holidays. When your company is shut down for the holidays who wants to return to all of that work at the beginning of a new year? Let me answer that for you. You don’t.

Our solution? We would like to gift you more time this season. Time, that is, to not have to work on engineering projects that will push back your project timeline into next year and into next quarter. No, we are not work-aholics. Our CEO gives us our holidays off but we do not do a hard shutdown during the holidays like some manufacturing plants do. And we’d like to see you get a head start on your 2018 year goals.

So what does this mean for you? Less work. We would love to offer our engineering services to you when you need it the most. We know you value your time and you’re eager to enjoy some downtime around the holidays.

Want to learn more about our design and engineering services? Check us out here.

You probably have a checklist for what to do when your company shuts down for a few weeks, but if you need a refresher -here are a few steps.

3 Steps to Take if your Company is Closed During Holidays

If you are shut down for the holidays – here is a short checklist you may want to double check to make sure you’re ready to leave for the holidays.

Notify Employees, Customers, Vendors, and Hospitality Services

Notifying employees may be the obvious one but you can imagine that with everyone finding the time to get everything done by the end of the year – it’s easier to plan your to-do list around the time that you actually have when the office is open. So notify your employees internally via email, calendar, Facebook Workplace, or by another platform you’ve set up for internal communication.

Make sure all of your customers and clients know all of the days that you will be closed. This is especially important for those that are trying to get a hold of your business during office hours when you are typically open. Make sure that you have a personal out-of-the-office voicemail set up in case they didn’t get that email you sent. Think about setting up a calendar or a list of all of the holidays and pre-planned office shutdowns to be available on your website so there is no confusion.

Vendors may have reoccurring delivery schedules that need to be notified via phone, text, or email to put a hold on deliverables. And sometimes it may be easy to forget about your hospitality services that come in the middle of the night once or twice a week to clean your office – don’t make the janitors and clean-up crew come in when you aren’t at the office to make a mess.

Turn off Office Equipment & Turn Down the Thermostat

Don’t just say that your business is green – take actions to preserve energy by turning off all of the office lights, any office machinery that won’t be used, and turning down the thermostat for the shutdown. Not only will you be saving energy – you’ll be saving a lot of money in energy costs too.

Prepare to Start the New Year with a Bang

Your customers are going to want to hear from you at the beginning of a fiscal year. What better way to do that than write a refreshing handwritten card to send when you get back into the office from your holiday retreat? If you don’t have time to do a handwritten card because you have a longer to-do list than expected, then at least send an personal email out that wishes farewell to 2017 and a warm welcome to 2018.

Also, sending a letter out is an opportunity to inform your customers of any upcoming and exciting events or products that will hit the market at the start of the new year. They’ll want to hear about what you’ve got in store for them.

Don’t forget to take advantage of our Design and Engineering Services this holiday season – as we would like to help you get a head start on the new year with your engineering projects.

Industrial Design has always been an important element of successful product development. Aesthetically and functionally pleasing products are important to customer perception and ultimately may add to increased acceptance and improved sales.

The Engineering Services Group at EAC Product Solutions solved such an industrial design challenge for a valued customer, Bob Barker Company, Inc. Bob Barker is America’s leading detention supplier and maker of the Vancell, which is a prisoner transport unit that is installed in commercial vans. They approached EAC to create a successor, which ultimately became the Vancell Elite.

Bob Barker wanted the new version of the Vancell to fit newer, redesigned van models. At the same time, they requested upgrades to several user features. They wanted to incorporate design elements to differentiate the redesign of the Vancell from its competitors. The redesign was required to invoke feelings of ruggedness, strength, and security.

With those challenging requirements, the Designers in the Engineering Services Group started by selecting diamond plate panels for the exterior of the access doors to elude to the element of ruggedness. The diamond shaped patterns were then carried through to the ventilation cutouts in wall panels for continuity of theme. A new logo, designed by Bob Barker Company, was added to the access doors as well as laser cut sheet metal brackets. The bracket was painted black with another bracket behind painted orange for a bold, three-dimensional look. A small Bob Barker decal was placed nearby to increase brand awareness. The Designers also added chrome paddle latches and bright screw heads to accent the diamond patterns and create a sense of security.

Next, a new base color was needed for the exterior of the unit. The competitor’s prisoner transport unit was painted a sterile white that easily showed dirt and wear. The old Vancell was painted a dull gray. Bob Barker Company wanted to set themselves apart from both of these units with a bold and dynamic color. Using CAD models created in PTC Creo, the Designers rendered images in different colors to help the company determine which color was best. A medium matte blue was selected.

Upon agreement of design features and colors, manufacturing drawings were released to a third-party fabrication shop. The prototype of the first transport unit was completed in time for display and demonstration at a large trade show. The Marketing and Sales team at Bob Barker Company were excited about the appearance and function of the completed Vancell Elite and confirmed that it met their requirements — rugged, strong, and secure. They also received many positive comments from prospective customers at the trade show.

The VanCell Elite difference is not only through its new and improved design, but it’s features as well. The VanCell Elite provides improved visibility for greater officer security through controlled viewing, PREA compliant segregation compartments, and an enhanced 4 Camera Viewing System and optional DVR upgrade.

Learn more about the VanCell Elite here.

If you have industrial design or engineering project, the Engineering Services Group can step in and mentor you throughout your design process or act as your engineering team. The innovative engineers and designs can help realize your ideas and transform the way you design your products. For more information, contact us here or learn more about our Design and Engineering services here.

The Internet of Things (IoT) sits atop a 3-legged stool. Each leg is as important as the next. If any are missing it all falls down. What are these all-important legs you ask? Strategy, Connected Things, and Platform.

All of the buzz and hype, all of the conversations I’ve had with manufacturing and product development clients, can be grouped into one of those categories. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have those three ‘legs’ supporting any IoT initiative. The hard part is keeping a balanced approach so each leg of the stool is supporting its fair share of the load. This is especially hard when you consider the ‘non-traditional’ product development players the IoT brings to the table. It’s shifting the value of products and transforming companies altogether.

Sometimes this transformation causes such a stir that people and companies tend to ignore the groundwork and adopt a more ad-hoc approach. That’s unfortunate because now, more than ever, business strategists, engineers, and IT need to come together to support a new breed of products.

Let’s build a (theoretical) stool. In the next few paragraphs I’ll explain EAC Connect Services’ 3-Legged Stool analogy.

First, consider Strategy — the ‘why’ leg of the stool. There needs to be a clear connection between any IoT efforts and the value they bring to core business strategy. Since the IoT is clearly shifting product value by adding more information about status, usage, location, efficiency, etc, there can be pretty clear connections made between corporate initiatives and enhanced products with sensors, connectivity and analytics. What’s challenging is bridging the gap created by the language used in different groups. We often see people rattle off business initiatives such as Grow Revenue, Improve Service, Increase Customer Engagement, and Reduce Scrap. Rarely does anyone jump up and say ‘IoT is the Answer.’ Interestingly, the IoT can directly impact each of those goals. The IoT can create new revenue streams based on data acquisition or alternatives to existing service models. It could even change the way products are sold — think ‘Product As A Service’ versus high capital expenditures. How could you be more engaged with customers than through an on-going subscription and monitoring program? And as for scrap, things like machine learning, predictive failure and real-time operational efficiency are just the tip of the iceberg.

Second, let’s consider Connected Things — the ‘what’ leg of the stool. Take a moment and look around the room…seriously, look around the room in which you currently reside. How many connected devices do you see? Now think about the connected devices and systems that you don’t see. I call this ‘pervasive connectivity.’ It’s the notion that connected things are rapidly outnumbering us. Analysts expect there will be about 7 connected and addressable things per person by 2020. These things may connect via bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet, long-range radio, cellular, and satellite signals amongst others. Couple this with ever-shrinking energy-efficient sensors piggybacking on existing products or embedded directly within new ones and we’re ready to analyze streams of data. This could happen real-time, locally or post-facto in the cloud. These connected and enabled things provide data junkies with more data than they know what to do with. And one cool twist is that the back-end systems are learning to mine and manage data on their own. In short, the ‘how’ of smart and connected products comes in layers — base product infrastructure, sensor systems and connectivity form the foundation. Then depending on the objective, analytics may occur real-time, be short-term local or happen ‘in the cloud.’

Third is Platform — the ‘how’ leg of the stool. Consider for a moment the possibilities of a truly scalable cloud IoT purpose-built platform. One where security, connectivity and flexibility are a part of the DNA and easy connection to other enterprise systems like PLM, CRM, MES and the like are not just a notion, but a reality. Picture a platform where these converging streams of data can be analyzed by a learning system that determines what ‘normal’ looks like and autonomously notifies other systems with the right information based on the audience or system. At this point, integrating service information through augmented reality seems like a natural extension and provides the next step in connected product development and the over-the-top service we’re all pursuing. And for some icing on our proverbial cake, how about the ability for ‘non-developers’ to quickly build role-specific dashboards and mashups without needing to write piles of code? While new platforms are springing up, ThingWorx is already in place and providing a central hub for the connected enterprise to meet and even exceed its business objectives.

While all three elements — Strategy, Connected Things, and true IoT platforms — seem somewhat elemental, balancing these will be central to the success of any IoT enabled business initiative. This is the approach we take at EAC through our Connect Services. Whether you’d like help in one, two or all three of these areas, we’d love to partner with you and see your next IoT project flourish.

Imagine getting a text from your equipment in the field telling you there’s been a problem. Not too far of a stretch, right? Well, let’s take the situation a bit further.  What if you get an unsolicited thank-you email from your customer who was excited about how fast their last service call went since the service rep had the right parts for the particular problem on the machine.  That’s because the cloud-based machine monitoring system had automated communications between the equipment, the supply chain, the service reps truck inventory and the recent training the rep had completed for just this situation.  Even further, once on site, the rep pointed an iPad at the equipment and the video displayed an augmented reality video of the machine with overlaid graphics showing both the internal geometry and streaming sensor data indicating the problem and highlighting failing parts. Here’s the kicker — when the rep clicked on the screen to see the details of the issue, a ‘how-to’ video popped up on the screen to step the rep through the repair. By the way, did I mention that the issue was predicted by a different cloud computer monitoring huge stores of data and ‘learning’ while it’s predicting issues?

Ok, so I’m not much of a science writer, but it doesn’t matter because this isn’t ‘the sci-fi of the future.’ This is today. This is what the Internet of Things looks like, and it’s both growing and accelerating. Last week, I attended LiveWorx ’15 with 2500 other like-minded professionals. This PTC Internet of Things conference had another 5000 in attendance virtually as the Boston venue had sold out locally. It was pretty obvious that the buzz continues to grow around this topic and that we’re all interested in growing and accelerating business and product development leveraging these technologies.

While some of the technology and science behind cloud computing is ground-breaking and game-changing, it’s not just about the technology. That’s why having both a business and product development strategy are just as important as integrating the technology into the products. At EAC, we’ve been developing products and helping others do the same for the last 20 years. We’re especially excited about helping companies build and execute their IoT strategy since the opportunity and impact are only limited by the imagination. We’re talking about deeper engagement with customers, reducing operating and service cost, new revenue streams, even products that tell product managers and engineers what customers want in additional functionality or how they’re using your product today. If you’re considering developing or leveraging smart and connected products as a part of your product development and business strategy, we’d love to hear from you and partner with you along the way. If you’re not planning out an IoT strategy, we should talk.

EAC Product Development Solutions is a Minnesota based company providing engineering and product development software, service and consulting to the discrete manufacturing industry. Rob is currently leading the EAC business effort related to product development for the Internet of Things. You can reach out to us here!