“We don’t need analysis for our products…”

I am on vacation this week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina…Hatteras Island to be precise.  While I’m not supposed to be thinking about FEA and work-related stuff, the sand castle project my kids & I undertook prompted some thoughts worth sharing.  As most parents do, we picked up new and cool looking shovels and buckets for our week on the beach.  Of particular interest was a large purple sand shovel we thought would be our #1 tool for moving the large quantities of sand our ambitious project would require.  If you looked at this shovel, (masterfully modeled by my son, Noah) you would see that someone clearly put some thought into the ribbing structure in the handle.  Some of it is clearly for flow in the injection molding process but some of the ribs appear to be targeting stiffness.

Unfortunately, we learned right away that when the shovel was put to task on the moat around our castle, it bent in all the places you don’t want it to and severely impeded our construction.  Fortunately, we weren’t being compensated based on schedule so we plugged away but I couldn’t help thinking how easily the flexure I observed could have been resolved with design analysis.  (Yes…I have a life… but, as with many engineers, I can’t turn off problem solving mode.  Drives my family nuts!)

I’m not a betting man but I’m quite sure that if I approached the designers at this company, I would be told that they just design kids beach toys…they don’t really need analysis.  However, as one of their customers, I would have to take exception with that.  Is an under-designed sand shovel a life or death concern? Absolutely not.  However, one definition of quality is ‘performs per expectations’ and in this case, I would consider this a low quality product.  As easy as COSMOSWorks makes design analysis, not checking and optimizing stiffness and cost of this product seems negligent to me.  A user doesn’t even need to know detailed plastic failure theory or anything related to stress evaluation to explore options for improving stiffness.  In the products you design, are there stiffness related requirements that are taken for granted? Do you find yourself guessing at support structures?  If the question of stiffness even crosses your mind, how can you justify not running a few analysis passes at the design to make sure it behaves as expected…especially in the hands of your customers?

Comments

[Will C.]

Could it be the designer did a good job making a structurally sound shovel, but that in the end his "higher ups" produced it from an inferior/cheaper plastic?