SolidWorks 3D speeds time to market for KeyMed

UK-based KeyMed, a wholly owned subsidiary of Olympus Corporation, Japan, designs, manufactures and distributes ancillary equipment for Olympus' range of endoscopy systems, as well as remote visual inspection equipment for industrial applications.

KeyMed's medical manufactured products include workstations, cleaning equipment, sterilisation cases and vacuum pumps. As a leader in the medical and industrial equipment market, KeyMed realised that, to increase productivity and continue to meet market demand, it needed to move to an integrated 3D CAD package. Medical research & development division manager Ian Hallett is responsible for all the medical products designed at KeyMed. His team comprises 13 design engineers and two technicians and they have been using SolidWorks 3D design software for six years. The move to 3D came out of a need to grow KeyMed's design capability, explained Hallett: "our products are complex in terms of shapes and mouldings, and our previous CAD software, CADDS5, was not flexible enough to model all the surfaces." Hallett was originally drawn to SolidWorks because of its 3D design capability, but soon realised there were many other benefits. "We make a lot of sheet metal components and SolidWorks has a very good sheet metal facility. It also allows us to produce complicated models for plastic moulding, and again it was that feature that we found extremely useful as our products incorporate many plastic moulded components. The other advantage is that more and more companies are using SolidWorks, enabling us to send native files to external suppliers. "This compatibility reduces the development time because suppliers don't have to re-engineer the model. They simply take our model and use it to lay out cutting paths for the CNC machines to create the mould tools. This means that they are using our data, not something they've had to make up themselves." Internally KeyMed has expanded its use of SolidWorks beyond the design group: "one of the things we wanted to do was integrate our CAD system with other departments within KeyMed," explained Hallett. "The technical publications group is responsible for writing the instruction manuals that accompany our products. Before SolidWorks they would have to wait until we had an actual product available before they could begin work on the manuals, thus delaying the product introduction. Now they are able to use CAD images and can start writing the manuals from a very early stage in the design process. "By using the CAD models we have literature ready at the same time as the first prototypes, which means that we can complete the CE-marking early to allow in-field evaluation to happen, all of which leads to the final product being launched sooner. There's no longer any delay and that's a quantifiable time-saving."

Head start The company has also installed SolidWorks in its manufacturing facility, where it is used for setting up production lines: "SolidWorks gives the manufacturing team a head start as well," said Hallett. "They are able to incorporate the CAD models into their electronic method sheets, which they can now update very quickly. It's all about time to market – we asked ourselves who else could benefit from this software in order to save time on projects, and that is why we have rolled out SolidWorks across the company." Another department benefiting from 3D data is sales and marketing: "we render the CAD models and import them into Photoworks to create powerful visuals so that customers can get an idea of what the final product will look like, which is very useful from the sales and marketing point of view," explained Hallett. "We often put rendered CAD images into our brochures, which really helps when we're preparing for a product launch. SolidWorks has been utilised by every area we can think of."

Share designs KeyMed also saves time by using SolidWorks' eDrawings to email designs to its parent company in Japan, often replacing the need to have meetings that can add months to the product development cycle. The company also uses eDrawings to share designs with its suppliers, allowing them to view 3D CAD files as a simple, self-executing program, without downloading additional software. Suppliers can review and mark up the drawings and email them back to KeyMed in record time. KeyMed uses COSMOSWorks for finite element analysis to calculate how products will perform under static loads, shock and vibrations: "if we have a product with high loads on it, we perform finite element analysis before committing to an expensive prototype. COSMOSWorks has improved enormously in the last few years and we're making much more use of it." The medical device technology market is highly competitive, and there is pressure to apply high standards of design and styling: "the equipment we sell is in a relatively low volume market but our customers still expect to have the quality finish, attractive mouldings and all the signs of quality," commented Hallett. "SolidWorks guarantees that we achieve the right appearance." As well as the aesthetics and the appearance of its products, the designers at KeyMed have to consider the environment the products are used in: "in an operating theatre during an endoscopy procedure it is important that the ergonomics of the equipment are optimised so that the medical staff can quickly and easily get to the equipment to adjust it and move it around. 3D gives us the ability to visualise our ideas and concepts from an early stage. It also means that, during development, the customer can envisage the product, get a feel for how it's going to work, and give us feed back from a very early stage." When asked if he could do his job without SolidWorks, Hallett laughed: "I wouldn't want to. There is incredible power in being able to show somebody the whole assembly on screen, and in fact, if the CAD files are mated correctly you can actually manipulate everything and show people how a product will move. This is something we couldn't have done before." SolidWorks has greatly increased KeyMed's productivity, shortening the product design process and reducing design errors. "Without it we would experience many more delays, increased costs in product development, and it would be more difficult to get people to commit to a project early on. It helps us deliver on our service promise and keeps us at the forefront of medical device technology."