Improving Research, Design, & Manufacturing » Online Resources

What happens after a engineering project is posted?

T. Brian Jones — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:20:20 +0000

The idea behind Industrial Interface is pretty simple. Engineers need stuff and suppliers sell stuff. We put the two groups together in a very efficient way. An engineer describes what she is looking for in detail, and our system puts her project in front of relevant suppliers who might be able to help. If they can help, they pay us a fee (to encourage high quality connections and keep the service running) and then they can contact her. That sure was simple. Now I’m going to give you the details.

Step 1: Engineer posts a project

The first step on our site is an engineer posting a specific application for which a solution or a supplier is needed. An engineer looking for a small heating unit is a great example of a project and you can see the level of detail that we ask for. The goal with a project is for the engineer to clearly outline what he is trying to do, the technical requirements of the application, and any other details that allow a supplier to recognize whether or not he can provide what the engineer needs (detailed description of an engineering project posting).

Step 2: System identifies relevant suppliers

Once an engineer submits a project, our system goes to work. It processes the project and identifies relevant suppliers within our system based on their detailed supplier profiles. Our system also searches outside our database and finds relevant suppliers via industrial directories and supplier websites. The goal is to find as many suppliers as we can that both sell what the engineer needs, and sell it in the engineer’s region.

Our system will often identify dozens of relevant suppliers (sometimes hundreds), and at that point, it sends an email to them all notifying them of the project. The link they get takes them to a project page that looks like this screenshot.

Step 3: Suppliers review project

At this point, a supplier can review the location of the engineer, the company size, industry, and all the technical details of the application. The supplier then makes a well informed decision about the project. If it’s a good fit for his business, then he can purchase the lead and contact the engineer. If he doesn’t have an account, he is forced to complete one before contacting any members of Industrial Interface. Both parties are then alerted of the match.

If the supplier doesn’t sell what the engineer needs, then he can simply click “Share This Lead” and send the project along to another supplier that can help. This is often how suppliers get the best leads, and we have simply streamlined the process through our system. How nice is it not to repeat your project on the phone to dozens of different salespeople?

Step 4: Engineer finds solution and supplier

After suppliers click contact, both parties are alerted of the match and a connection is made. Our goal is to put engineers in touch with five suppliers for every project they post: the optimal number that doesn’t overwhelm engineers and buyers and keeps our suppliers excited about their chance of winning business. Usually this connection happens within a few days of a project being posted to our site, but we’ve seen it happen as quickly as a few minutes, and we’re getting better every day. Over 90% of projects posted by engineers have been contacted by relevant suppliers. Once you find what you need, simply login and close your project and no one else will be able to contact you.

Why this works so well?

Industrial Interface eliminates the hassle of finding parts and puts engineers and buyers in direct contact with local sales reps who have already screened the application and know that they sell exactly what is needed. Wow! That is so simple. How did anyone find parts before Industrial Interface?

Give it a try

Industrial Interface is always free for engineers and buyers to use, and it only takes a few minutes to create an account and post your first project. Remember to enter as much information as you can about your application so that our system can eliminate suppliers that aren’t relevant to your need. (read more about posting a complete project)

How do engineers and buyers currently find products and services online?

T. Brian Jones — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:15:28 +0000

Right now, and I mean right this second… there are thousands of engineers and technical buyers searching for industrial products, components, materials, and services across hundreds of industries and thousands of product categories. The web traffic on industrial directories alone is on the order of 500,000 visits per day.

These searches end in a page that links to hundreds of suppliers for a specific category (5,300 in adhesives on Thomasnet,1,300 on Macrae’s Blue Book, and 1,100 results on Globalspec). “Look now many suppliers we have.” This seems exciting but is an absolute nightmare for someone looking for products. What’s next? The engineer or buyer has to:

click through dozens of supplier websites
review products and guess if each company sells what he needs
call a central number and describe his application
get connected to a manager and describe his application
wait for a call from a local rep to describe his application
contact a distributor to actually purchase the product
get referred to another company because this one doesn’t have what he needs
start over!

Let suppliers find you

Industrial Interface eliminates all this mess and puts engineers and buyers in direct contact with a local sales rep who has already screened the application and knows that he sells exactly what is needed. Wow! That is so simple. Why not share your application with our community and let suppliers find you?

How do we do this

Our suppliers create incredibly detailed profiles where they input all of the products, services, and certifications for the companies that they sell products for. We use this data to match your projects with relevant suppliers both inside and outside of our system.

Our industrial search engine

If you aren’t ready to post a project to an open system, at least give our aggregated industrial search engine a try. We’ve compiled 40 of the best search sites into a custom Google search engine that makes it quicker and more efficient to find what you’re looking for. Why not search all 40 of these sites at once?

Making our suppliers more accessible to engineers

T. Brian Jones — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:50:00 +0000

When industrial salespeople sign up for our site, they complete a detailed supplier profile including their products and services. Our system stores all this information in a database, and we use it to match engineering projects to the right suppliers. To show this we built some quick links to basic search pages that list this information in an easily to read way. We’re hoping by making this data accessible, our users will gain a deeper understanding of how our system works.

Search suppliers by products they sell: Anaerobic Adhesives, Power Supplies, Solenoid Valves, Vacuum Pumps… Search by the thousands of products that suppliers have indicated they sell.
Search suppliers by services they offer: Looking for a job shop that does Rotary Die Cutting or a rep firm specializing in UV Bonding? Search suppliers by the thousands of services that they have indicated they offer.
Search suppliers by companies they represent: One of the most unique datasets that Industrial Interface maintains about it’s suppliers is a list of the companies they represent. Engineers are often looking for a product from a specific manufacturer, but don’t always know who rep’s that manufacturer in their region. Our system captures this data and makes it easy to find all the suppliers of products made by 3M, Rogers Corp., or all the companies our suppliers list.
Search suppliers by certifications they maintain: It’s often difficult to find suppliers with certain niche certifications that you need for an application. Here is a great way to find them: ISO13485, Class 100 Clean Room, ITAR Compliant…

Help suppliers help you by posting complete project details to Industrial Interface

T. Brian Jones — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:08:29 +0000

The first time engineers post a design project to Industrial Interface, they usually don’t write a book about their application. We get it. First time on some weird website… why would you waste your time filling out a long form? When we see these vague projects we reach out to get the details and welcome you to the community. It’s during that conversation that you really open up. You tell us all about your application, what you’re trying to do, what the big project is, problems you are having, things you’ve tried, etc.

This is the same conversation you have with a new supplier on the phone, we’re just making it more efficient through our website. So take a minute to read through all the sections below and learn how you can best complete a project posting to get the maximum value out of your time, and hopefully, find the exact supplier of the exact solution you are looking for. Each section below corresponds to a form field on our site when you post your sourcing need. I’ve included some real examples from our users in some sections that should help you out. First, I’ll let you see a great example of a complete project.

Descriptive Title

Type a few words (no more than one sentence) that clearly states what you are looking for or what you are trying to do. Suppliers are just as busy as you are and they need a high level picture of what your application is from this one line. Use important keywords and action terms. Here are some great examples of descriptive titles.

1) PCB Fabrication for small prototype runs
2) Miniature ultrasonic oven / heater
3) Adhesive to bond nylon 66 to PVC

Design Problem or Sourcing Need

What is your application and how are you trying to solve it? Sometimes you’ll be able to clearly articulate what you are looking for, like in the project above (Adhesive to bond nylon 66 to PVC) but other times, you may only know what you are trying to accomplish, and you won’t have a specific solution yet. Be clear about this and don’t guess.

If you know you need to seal electronic components from corrosive plant conditions, but don’t know what the best method is, then describe the size of your control box, the materials, the closing mechanism, how the box seals, the temperatures it will see and the corrosive agents involved. Suppliers have helped solve dozens of problems just like this one and will be able to quickly tell you what you need.

This is the meat of your posting. Be as detailed as you can and exlain every detail no matter how mundane you think it is. All of this information helps suppliers understand your application and find the right product from their inventory. If you are vague, you may miss out on a solution that you will never find on your own, and you’ll end up talking to a bunch of suppliers who don’t sell what you need. Remember, posting your project in detail helps eliminate suppliers who aren’t relevant to your project, and saves everyone a lot of time.

Here is a great example from the project titled “Miniature ultrasonic oven / heater,” in the screenshot above:

I am looking for an “oven” or “heater” that can heat equivalently to 150C-200C. Similar to the product described on www.soniwave.com, however I need one where the oven is very small, approx. 1cm x 1cm x 1cm, which should mean that the ultrasonic delivery mechanism is small. This may need a custom engineered solution. Oven will be powered via external power supply. There is some flexibility in terms of size. I would prefer a COTS solution, but can not find anything this small.

Required Specifications

This section allows you to list technical details about your application that a supplier or product must meet to be acceptable and useful for your design. If the parts you are trying to glue together will see temperatures of 350 degrees C, then you need the adhesive to hold up to those temperatures. Put that information here. See another example below from the same heater project.

-Heating target material 150C-200C (oven is small 1cm x 1cm x 1cm)
-Temperature shall be controllable
-Overall unit size must be small, approximately hand-size

Ideal Specifications

Here you can list details that you would really like to have, but that aren’t absolutely necessary. If you’d like the adhesive above to still hold at 500 degrees C, put that here, but make sure to list the absolute minimum requirement (350C) under Required Specifications.

Required Volumes

This section gives a supplier an idea of how big your application is. Make sure to list both the current volumes you are looking to purchase right away, as well as the eventual volumes you might see in a production run. This helps suppliers of the right size find applications that are good fit for their capabilities. (eg. 100 for prototype, 1000/day in production) Some suppliers might have a great part at a great price for prototyping, but won’t be able to meet your production needs.

Project Stage

Select Research & Design if you are simply planning. Select Prototype if you are looking for low quantities for test runs. Select Manufacture if you have reached the final stage of your design and need your full volume of parts. Selecting this stage properly helps suppliers know whether you want direction and insight into your application or simply need quotes on parts for production.

Solution Needed By

When do you absolutely need this solution by? Remember that most applications will take a minimum of a few weeks to work out even with the most responsive and knowledgable suppliers.

Delivery Outside U.S.

Select Yes only if the products or services you are looking for need to be sent outside the US. Some suppliers may sell exactly what you need, but may not have the proper licences or infrastructure to send your parts where you need them. Let them know before they waste everyone’s time contacting you about an application they ultimately can’t help with.

Required Supplier Certifications

If you need your supplier to meet any specific criteria like ISO9001, list those criteria here. This helps eliminate suppliers who sell what you need but don’t meet your company’s requirements.

Known Solutions or Alternatives

What parts or solutions have you already investigated that work? Why are you trying to replace them? These details can save time by eliminating duplicate suppliers. This also gives suppliers a good sense of what you are not trying to do for this specific design application. If you have a solution from another supplier that just isn’t right, list that part or information and supplier name. Lots of suppliers know their competitors product lines and know the exact substitute for what you are trying to do.

Stuff You’ve Tried That Doesn’t Work

If you’ve already tried things that don’t work, you don’t want a supplier contacting you with the same broken solution. List everything here that you’ve tried. Be specific about what it was, how you implemented it, and why it didn’t work.

Attach Files

Here is your chance to provide a visual aid to augment all your explanations above. Whenever possible, attach pictures and drawings of your application. Date sheets, notes, pdfs, powerpoints, and sketches are all great additions to make your project complete for anyone reviewing it.

Post a Project - Login | Create an Engineering Account

You are missing business from your current customers so try our Partnership Landing Page

Chris Powell — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:31:04 +0000

If you are a technical salesperson and have ever pinged an engineer who just spec’d in another supplier for a part you could have supplied, then this post is for you.

The problem Sales people face is two fold: (1) Figuring out who the real decision makers are, and, (2) Making sure that you are meeting with that individual when they are working on relevant projects. Even when you think you and your decision maker are best buddies and that you will get called when you are needed, you are probably missing business.

The problem with this industry is that there is no visibility on what engineers are working on, and engineers have a tough time knowing the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of products and services that any given supplier offers.

Solution: Industrial Interface Partnership Landing Pages (PLP).

What is a Partnership Landing Page (PLP)?

A PLP is a co-branded URL like the one shown below; setup for COG Engineering and hosted by Industrial Interface at http://cog.industrialinterface.com. It features information about the supplier firm and an Industrial Interface signup form. These pages can be customized to fit your needs.

How does a PLP increase visibility on your customers?

Every time that an Engineer signs up through your PLP, that engineer becomes associated with your company. This means that within Industrial Interface, that Engineer is yours. You get to see every project he posts, and you receive first right of refusal on those projects (engineering projects explained). If you can’t help him, then his project will go live for other suppliers to view. This way, you and Industrial Interface become a resource for every sourcing need that engineer has. By promoting this page to your current database of customers, you are able to see projects from customers that you would have otherwise missed.

PLP Use Case

You are working with an Engineer at Rockwell Automation. This Engineer asks if you can supply custom cable and connector assemblies. You sell EMI/RFI shielding materials and board level components, but know someone who does sell what the engineer needs. You can either (Option A) put the Engineer directly in touch with your cable and connector contact, or (Option B) you can tell the Engineer to post their design project through your PLP.

Option A Results: You may get a thank you from the cable and connector sales person. Maybe this sales person refers some EMI/RFI shielding business to you in the future.

Option B Results: Because the Rockwell engineer has gone through your PLP, you receive an email notifying you that he has posted a project. You review the project, realize it’s not for you, and indicate that this project is outside of your competencies. You then “Share This Lead” with the same sales person mentioned in Option A, and maybe the sales person refers business back to you. The Rockwell engineer finds a cable and connector supplier through your contact or another supplier using Industrial Interface.

A few months later that same Rockwell engineer posts a project that requires EMI/RFI shielding. You receive an email notifying you about this project. You know that you can provide a solution to this problem, so you indicate that you want to claim the lead and no one else will be able to view the project.

You get complete visibility and the right to claim projects coming from any engineers you refer to the Industrial Interface system through your PLP.

How does my company qualify for a PLP?

Our goal is to only allow the best suppliers to create Premium Accounts and PLPs. This means you must have a dedicated technical sales rep in the territory you are marketing to, and you must be an established firm with a history of success helping engineers with their designs.
You must be doing active email marketing to your contact database or plan to work with us to start an industrial B2B email marketing campaign. We will help you promote your PLP to your customers by assisting with email promotion, giving your salespeople custom business cards with your personal PLP address, and by redirecting the “Contact Us” section of your website to your PLP if you choose.
Your contact database should be in excess of 1k Engineers. If you do not have this many contacts in your database, we can help augment your contacts with a qualified list of engineering targets.

What are the costs associated with a PLP?

Costs are dependent upon how broad your product line is, how big your database of contacts is, and what type of company you are. We’ve created PLPs for small Rep Groups and for large OEMs. Prices can range from $500 – $25k.

Call us now to learn more

There are a lot of benefits from partnering with Industrial Interface. We have worked as Manufacturer’s Reps, Distributor Sales Managers, and OEM Outside Sales Engineers for over 25 years. Our goal is to help your company increase the number of quality business opportunities you receive. We can help you grow your business, we work quickly, and are passionate about customer satisfaction. WE GUARANTEE that your PLP will return it’s cost via new business within 6 months or your money back.

Contact me (Chris Powell) to learn more: powell@industrialinterface.com or call 858.633.8158.

Double the leads from your current customers: email marketing to engineers by engineers

Chris Powell — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:23:37 +0000

This post is meant for all the Industrial Supplier Firms thinking about e-mail marketing.

If you are in technical sales, this post is for you. This includes Manufacturing Rep Groups, Distributors, and OEMs who want to get more business from their contact database. There are a ton of reasons to Email Market and practically no reasons not to. So, why haven’t you started? Because it seems like such a big task that you don’t know where to start? Well, I’m here to tell you where you start!

Engineers are information hungry people and your company has a ton of very valuable information to share with them. That’s how you need to look at Email Marketing. You are not promoting your company via email. You are sharing brief blurbs about topics on which you are an expert. So here are the five steps to starting a successful email marketing campaign to Engineers:

Write the content

Don’t start your email marketing campaign until you have atleast five emails ready to go. The key to writing the content ahead of time is that it allows you to consistently email your customers and targets. People like being able to count on the fact that the first Monday of every month they get an email from XYZ manufacturing.

Keep it short

Don’t write a book. Your goal is to become recognized as a resource. This means your companies newsletter needs to be concise and full of information applicable to your audience. Tell stories, give examples, and appeal to the human side of engineers.

Keep it simple

Write a sentence or two about your company. Then, write a paragraph about a product and why it is is the next wave in technology or explain how a specific process in which you specialize works. Engineers will never know your entire catalog, but they’ll remember that you are an expert on a niche application and will associate you with that product category.

Pick an email client to send your emails through

There are a ton of them like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, and Emma. Some have better tracking that others, while some are less expensive. Others are easier to use. It’s a trade off. Call me for help getting started: Chris Powell – 858-633-8158

Allocate enough resources

Writing a good newsletter is going to take some time and some practice. Make sure that you try the marketing campaign for enough time. Enough time is about two times the sell cycle time for your product. In the electronics industry, this could be six months. In the defense or auto industry, this could be three years. Adjust accordingly. This allows you to hit every potential customer during a period when you know they need to buy.

How can Industrial Interface help

I have spoken with hundreds of supplier firms about how they can get started with email marketing, and 99% of them say that they just don’t have the time to get it off the ground. For this reason, Industrial Interface is now offering six-month email marketing campaigns for our suppliers. We evaluate your goals with the campaign, fill in the holes, and get everything set up and running for six months. We market to engineers all day long, and we know how to keep it short, and keep it simple.

If you are interested in learning more about this, please contact me at powell@industrialinterface.com or 858-633-8158.

Engineering fundamentals, resources, tools, calculators, forums and more

T. Brian Jones — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:42:05 +0000

Every time I ask engineers about resources they use, someone mentions eFunda “Engineering Fundamentals”. I’ve been here often because the site has good SEO and shows up in searches, but I’ve never been a fan. I took another look recently and decided that the site has cleaned up it’s act a little, although I still maintain that most topics can be easily found through a Google search.

I think this site is mostly interesting for a new engineer. It’s organized pretty well these days, and the ads don’t quite get in the way as much as they used to (still annoying though). Articles delve into topics like “Bearing Types” and “Spring Design,” among hundreds of others. These are mostly practical application articles, but there are some equations and data tables throughout. Most articles leave me wanting more with the need to load another page anyway.

The articles are never much longer than a a few paragraphs, but give a quick overview. If you are a newbie, I think this would be a fun site to browse. You have to sign up for a free membership, however, after viewing the first few articles. They claim there are some benefits to this like access to advanced design resources and some mathematica stuff.

Topics on the site include, materials, design, processes, units, formulas, math, calculators, forums, and more. Eh. I don’t love eFunda, but some people seem to. The end mill graphic at the top is from their site. Pretty useful if you’ve never seen one before. Enjoy.

Industrial parts search on steroids

T. Brian Jones — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:02:41 +0000

I know a lot of people still like to browse online industrial listings even though Industrial Interface will do all that work for you, so we created a great little search engine that indexes 40 of the most popular and comprehensive listings on the web.

One of the many problems with these listings is that a specific search like “fda approved pressure sensitive adhesive” will usually only result in a listing of adhesive companies. On a few of these 40 sites, however, there will be a specific listing for fda approved adhesives. Using our aggregate search (powered by Google Custom Search), you can put in more specific searches like this and quicly identify the listing site with the most relevant / niche category to browse.

Is clicking through categories reasonable anymore?

You still get lost in a sea of suppliers once you find your desired niche, but that’s a topic for another post.

If you want to bypass all this needless searching and research, try posting your design application to our site and let suppliers find you and compete for your business. It’s much quicker and much easier. Don’t you just want to get back to working on your designs anyway? Watch our new video below to see how Industrial Interface works.

Industrial trade magazines and online content for engineers and designers

T. Brian Jones — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 04:48:07 +0000

When I got my first job as an manufacturing engineer, my boss immediately told me to get a subscription to Machine Design Magazine. “Awesome!” I thought to myself, followed by, “I wonder how much that’s gonna cost?”

Well, it turns out that Machine Design is a free magazine for engineers and designers. No kidding… there are hundreds of industrial trade magazines just like Machine Design that are all free. How cool?

The best part is that every magazine focusses on a specific niche of interest. Magazines are largely ad supported, but the articles really are interesting and up to date with technology. Most of these magazines have finally moved online and not only offer a digital edition, but also have all their content searchable and readable for free online as well.

Some of my personal favorites

Machine Design: Focusses on mechanical design. Articles range from technical analysis and software for mechanical systems to physical design of new mechanical design components. (subscribe to Machine Design)
Medical Design: Great articles focussed on new techniques for medical design and manufacture as well as cutting edge medical devices. Fun read even if you don’t design these types of products. (subscribe to Medical Design)
Military & Aerospace Electronics: Fun to stay up to date with the products that go into the aerospace industry. These articles typically give you a glimpse of the future of electronic components and technologies that will be affordable for your designs in a few years… unless you have the privilege of working on planes and spacecraft already! (subscribe to Military & Aerospace Electronics)

Comprehensive list of trade magazines

TradePub trade mag listing – thousands of mags in one place
Penton Media – dozens of great technical mags
Cygnus Media
Reed Business Magazines
Canon Communications – Medical, Pharma, and Manufacturing
Fabricators and Manufacturers Magazines

77,000 freely searchable engineering material datasheets

T. Brian Jones — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:41:15 +0000

MatWeb is easily the most comprehensive materials database freely available on the web. When I used to work as a deign engineer I probably went to MatWeb at least a couple times a week.

As of this post, MatWeb has over 77,000 materials in it’s searchable database, and they are all free to access, although there are advanced features (advanced search, side-by-side material comparisons, data download capabilities) that require you to register for a free account. Premium accounts cost $100 per year and give you increased search and comparison functionality and the ability to download materials right into your favorite design software.

MatWeb has an incredibly vast catalog of materials. You can usually find even the most obscure material. For plastics and other branded materials, you can usually find the datasheet for the specific branded version, meaning you know the difference between an HDPE made by Dupont, and an HDPE made by 3M (although the subtle variances are sometimes eaten up in manufacturing tolerances). For example, a search for HDPE actually yields more than 1,400 results.

A Search for HDPE

The Datasheet for a Generic Injection Molded HDPE

Below are all the search options offered on the site:

Advanced Search – MatWeb’s most powerful search tool allows users to build complex searches in an iterative process. Possible criteria are property, composition, material category, and user-input text options. (Registration Required).
Material Property Search – Find materials that meet the property value ranges that you require.
Metal Composition Search – Enter an elemental composition and find the matching alloys.
Material Type/Category Search – Select the type of material in which you are interested from a systematic list of drop-down boxes.
Manufacturer Name Search – Select a plastics manufacturer and find data sheets of their proprietary products listed in MatWeb.
Trade Name Search – Select a plastics trade name and find data sheets listed in MatWeb.
Polymer Film Search – Find film grade polymers that meet the property value ranges that you require.
Lubricant Search – Find lubricants that meet the property value ranges that you require.
Metal Alloy UNS Number – Select from the list of UNS numbers in MatWeb’s database and find the matching data sheets.

Search 30 million technical journal articles. Read any of them for $0.99.

T. Brian Jones — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:04:03 +0000

There are a lot of free trade magazines available for engineers and designers. These can be fun to read, and have lots of great pictures to flip through when you’re bored at work. How often do you actually find yourself referencing one of these free magazines, however, when you have a truly complex technical problem that needs solving? Probably never. You search google and you may search some engineering forums, but odds are what you’re looking for is tucked away in an expensive, subscription only, unsearchable academic journal. So how do you find this information? Enter DeepDyve.

DeepDyve allows you to search it’s database of over 30 million scientific, technical, and medical articles from distinguished journals. You can preview any article for free to see if it covers the topic you need. If it does, you simple rent the article for $0.99. The full text is then made available to you for 24 hours. The basic account even comes with 5 free rentals to try the system out. If you use it often, there are premium accounts that give you a certain number of articles for free every month for a reasonable subscription fee.

Anyone who has ever searched academic databases will be happy to see how simple the search technology is with DeepDyve. You don’t have to be an expert with search operators to find what you need, and you won’t get lost in disorganized and ambiguous results pages. You can search in the same way that you search on google. Of course, for more complex searches, you can access advanced search functions. See DeepDyve’s search below, compared to a LexisNexis search page.

Advanced Search on DeepDyve

LexisNexis Search Page

Many engineers may have had access to these articles and other traditional databases that index them while in school, but unless you work for a very large engineering firm, or are still in academia, these journals are probably completely inaccessible to you now. What’s so compelling about DeelDyve is that it gives every engineer at every company access to critical high tech information for their designs. You can even buy these with your own dollar, meaning you don’t need to waste time, or ‘valuable company resources’ trying to find the information you need. DeepDyve is a great site for every engineer that likes to fully understand every aspect of his or her design decisions.

OpenThesis.org creates centralized database for academic theses

T. Brian Jones — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:23:52 +0000

OpenThesis.org is a free-to-use, centralized database of academic theses where anyone can upload their completed and approved thesis. Their system typically includes details like bibliographical information, author, school, title, abstract, and date of publication, but doesn’t always have the full text available.

This is a great system that allows engineers and designers doing bleeding edge research to find the mode definitive and up to date research on a topic. Although users will typically still have to contact the school to get the full text, these are often available on the publishing university’s library website, or can be obtained by contacting the department involved in the research. (Example: search theses at my alma mater, Vanderbilt University.)

OpenThesis.org describes their system as this:

“OpenThesis.org is a searchable thesis & dissertation database, which helps increase the availability and utility of these important documents.

Historically, theses and dissertations have not been freely accessible through a powerful, centralized database. Rather, they have been available at individual College and University web sites (if at all), often via the respective school’s ETD (Electronic Thesis and Dissertation) program. While these ETD programs are very important (indeed, they provide the bulk of the data used to create OpenThesis.org), the lack of a free, centralized database means that a global search of theses and dissertations has often not been possible.

OpenThesis addresses that issue, and by creating a centralized search, encourages the reading and use of these important documents. The benefits to the schools and authors are numerous, including greater recognition in the research community, collaboration and employment opportunities, and intellectual property licensing opportunities.”

Streamlining Design from Concept to Production

Chris Powell — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:55:27 +0000

Industrial Interface co-founder, Chris Powell, presented to the local San Diego SAMPE chapter. In his presentation he discussed a variety of things that Engineers don’t normally encounter.

Chris worked as a Supplier to Electronic, Medical, Aerospace, and Automotive Industries for many years. Chris offered the SAMPE attendees a unique opportunity to see the world from the perspective of a Supplier. Topics discussed were Online Resources for the different stages in product development. He highlighted the benefits and problems with all of them and how Industrial Interface can be used to complement every one of them. The presentation is embedded below.

Online Resources For Engineers

View more presentations from Chris Powell.

This presentation occurred on Thursday February 25th, 2010 at The Butcher Shop in San Diego. We love presenting to local engineering societies. Contact Chris if you are interested.

Product lifecycle management (PLM) software covered by Manufacturing Business Technology Magazine

T. Brian Jones — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:17:11 +0000

Industrial Interface was mentioned recently in a great article in Manufacturing Business Technology magazine titled “Product Innovation: Keeping good ideas on the fast track.”

“Companies like IndustrialInterface.com take the collaborative approach a step further, offering online platforms that provide product engineers with a whole new universe of potential resources and partners.” ~Manufacturing Business Technologies Magazine

The article discusses various software and web based platforms that help companies and engineers keep their projects on track and manage the details of their projects with increased efficiency. The common theme between them all is taking action early in the design process and collaborating with outside resources and personnel that are already available all over the manufacturing industry.

To design an environmentally friendly product or cut costs down the line it’s imperative that engineers and project managers put in the necessary effort and planning right from the beginning. The article lists a number of good resources, all worth checking out, including IndustrialInterface.com.

The article was printed in the most recent issue of Manufacturing Business Technology.

Electrical Engineering Blog – Guest Post

Francois — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:33:55 +0000

This is a guest post by the moderator of the Electrical Engineering Blog. It’s a great blog going into the technical details of many interesting and useful facets of electrical engineering and design.

Electrical engineering BLOG was launched in April 2009 by a group of enthusiasts in the field of electrical installation and energy management (mainly based on IEC standards).

With these passionate people, we have created an environment for collaboration and exchange, and we wish to use this Blog to share our current experience as well as our questions about the future – to elicit reactions from others and to discover new concrete ideas, as well as technical and practical tips.

This blog is not a space to promote products and services.

We believe that we can attract and involve both designers and consultants; suppliers, customers, independent experts, and institutions.

Today there are 11 categories of articles, including 6 in energy efficiency (a major topic for everybody) but also 5 categories on more traditional issues such as electrical distribution and design software. We also feature a Web Tips category, brought to the site by a young web pro.

Our blog is open to trade links with other blogs, forums, and sites provided they are of high quality and relevant. It is an English speaking Blog, but so far we have many exchanges with Asia and Europe; all countries are more than welcome.

You can subscribe to the newsletter that is sent out every month. Go to top of the home page and click on “subscribe”. To post an article, visit our website at http://engineering.electrical-equipment.org/electrical-engineering-conditions or email me at engineering@electrical-equipment.org. Commenting on a posting is simple and can be done without any prior validation.

François B.
Moderator