Product engineering consulting firms offer mechanical engineering services and comprehensive product development solutions. Efficient design and development of products for high volume manufacturing is the goal of product engineering companies. San Diego customers can take advantage of specialty engineering (via high end software packages and trained engineers with a variety of specialties to use them), which includes advanced finite element analysis capabilities. This lets clients avoid the difficulties and expense of capital investments for finding and employing mechanical engineers and specific technology. It also enables the company to direct the work to the most capable person with the strongest product knowledge.
The Work of Mechanical Engineers in Product Engineering
Product engineering companies conduct product cost-ability procedures and test optimization. Mechanical engineers are the technical interface between the product design and development team and the client. They can be the entire product engineering team for the client or supplement the client’s existing engineers within a wide array of industries. A product engineer ensures the quality of the product and improves reliability using statistical methods and tools and high end analysis. Standards of performance and quality guide the engineers on the job.
Prototyping is often offered, to supplement the product engineering services using physical analysis methods. In-house prototyping capabilities eliminate communication errors between designers and manufacturers, decrease lead times, and give direct design for manufacturability experience. A product engineer utilizes strong analytic work methodology and problem solving skills.
Product engineering requires a wide range of tools and software. The tools that are used are tailored to the specific requests from clients. Product engineering involves the use of the following tools and software:
3D CAD/Management
- SolidWorks (primary)
- SolidWorks PDM (if requested)
- SolidThinking Inspire (if requested)
- Fusion 360 (if requested)
Finite Element Analysis
- AcuSolve (CFD)
- Altair HyperWorks Suite (primary)
- HyperMesh (pre-processing)
- HyperView (post-processing)
- SolidWorks Simulation (if requested)
- Optistruct/Radioss (solving/optimization)
Miscellaneous
- SolidCAM (CAM software, Full 3-axis with probing)
- Microsoft Office Suite
- Adobe Creative Cloud Suite
A successful product engineering team is skilled in all areas of the product development process. Industries served vary dramatically, as services are not industry specific. In-house resources allow opportunities for integration of services, combining design, analysis, manufacturing, and validation under one roof.
