Power tool manufacturing company reduces time to market with COSMOSM

Company Milwaukee Electric Tool Industry Consumer Location U.S.A. Product Used COSMOSM™ Type of Analysis Linear Static, Nonlinear More Details

The Challenge
Milwaukee Electric Tool, Brookfield, Wisconsin, makes power tools. In a high profile, very competitive marketplace, the company takes the high ground in its approach, describing the corporate vision as: "Professionals serving Professionals…Excellence in Quality, Performance, Value."

But to provide all that in a business where it used to take up to 16 1/2 weeks to design, prototype and test a single design iteration involved a long wait before a product got to the market. They needed to get a new model Sawzall reciprocating saw onto the very competitive market much faster by reducing the time spent redesigning, improving, and prototyping the saw's key component, called a wobble plate.

The Solution
Milwaukee chose the COSMOSM Advanced Configuration for its speed and ease of use. They used Pro/ENGINEER and COSMOSM with FFE Statics to optimize the design on the computer.

Instead of 16 1/2 weeks for designing, prototyping and testing several designs, the entire design process dropped to 5 1/2 weeks, including a week and a half to make a complex model and analyze it.

Summary and Metrics:

• Reduced desing process from 16 1/2 weeks to 5 1/2 weeks.
• Reduced FEA solving time from 40 minutes to 4 minutes.
• Created more robust designs fitted to the appropriate operating environment.