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Something that can take the pain out of part numbering and managing a project like this is simply a good tool, which excludes MS Excel, and that system doesn't have to come with an up front price tag of thousands of dollars or months of planning and implementation. Check out aligni.com and...

We use a simple number format of the form ppnnnnn where the first two digits indicate whether the item is a non-tabulated COTS (commercial off the shelf) part, a tabulated COTS pat (e.g., screws of different lengths), or a part for a specific client (could be a project or a subsystem in your...

Łukasz Skotny of enterfea.com has many great examples of analyzing such structures, and he's doing a series in which he analyzes certain problems first using hand calculations, then linear FEA, and finally nonlinear FEA. The first set of worked solutions is for a web under a local load...

I'll try to respond with a longer post, but briefly: I'm 46. I started consulting part time (moonlighting) in 2006. My first client was a former employer that I had left in 2004. I used one of their available SolidWorks licenses to do the work. Building and maintaining excellent relationships...

A close relative of mine in operations management went from the ink industry (process manufacturing, and not exactly a lively industry) to high volume, low value manufacturing of household wiring components (discrete manufacturing) to relatively low volume, high value manufacturing of sterile...

I like to use a board-based visual pipeline that lets me quickly see how many and which deals are in which stage of my pipeline. My stages include, for example: [ol 1] Lead or project identified Research and planning Initial contact made Qualification and needs discovery Proposal submitted ...

Don't be like me. I spent a decade telling people, "No, not 'ímage tech.' It's pronounced imagitec, like 'ímagination' and 'technology'. No, no, it's not spelled with a 'ch'. Or a 'k'. Just a 'c'. i. m. a. g. i. t. e. c. Oh, and it's '.net', not '.com.' " I rebranded to practicalprecision.com a...

If a whiteboard or post-it notes "almost" work for you, try any of the following products, which use a kanban model common to software development: https://trello.com/ https://kanbanflow.com/ https://products.office.com/en-us/business/task-management-software...

For those familiar with the classic Parts&Vendors program, Aligni markets themselves strongly as a cloud-based P&V replacement. It is a wonderfully modern, cloud-based solution. I just wish the workflow for engineering-related tasks such as BOM building and searching for existing parts and COTS...

Check out aligni.com. Its tag line is, "Cloud-based software for product lifecycle and manufacturing management." Given that you're operating with Excel spreadsheets and almost getting by now, I suspect it would be a good right-capability / right-cost / right-implementation time solution for...

I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, so this is not legal or accounting advice. Rather, it's based on my experience working with and knowing quite a few small business owners with "micro-multinational" companies. Some of these people are US citizens; some are not. Some of them live outside the US...

As David alluded to, cash is the life blood of any business, engineering included. I've posted a little bit about sales and marketing for engineering in replies to the thread How/where can engineering design firms for sale be identified? The other part of the equation is managing cash. You will...

If you either acquire or start your own business, do so with an eye toward making it a sellable asset at some point in your life. Built to Sell and The E-Myth are good references in that regard. But both of those - especialy The E-Myth - are heavily focused on the process of how the work is done...

We're fortunate as engineers that people are willing to pay us good money for what we know and can do - not just traditional employers. Presumably, you've been practicing engineering for sometime in the service of an employer. I recommend looking for a side project to start with. This will give...

Another backend consideration: Sort and store the cards in a way that distributes access to bins - and therefore minimizes wear and tear - somewhat equally. Here's a hint: It won't be alphabetically. I was reminded to this as I waited to vote on primary day. My ward had separated the voter...

Presumable, they will be known - unique identification, value, condition - before entering the system. They will be stored in a known location, and that index location will be stored in a database with the other identifying information so that it can be retrieved later by the same mechanism. To...

Based on the systems you describe, I'd search for mechatronics books, web sites, and course materials (ocw.mit.edu has a mechatronics lab, but it's not in depth). I don't own it, but Mechatronics: An Integrated Approach looks broad without being just a survey of components. It covers modeling...

I brought a load of books and mostly only used Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual (MERM) by Lindeburg, as jhake recommended. I think the others were a distraction as much as anything else. More importantly, I purchased the sample exam & practice questions from the same company. I took the...

Plus an end link. The Tsubaki catalog is a good resource.

Check out the thread Inexpensive FEA Software.