Design News for Mechanical and Design Engineers

The company’s Goldfire platform, which integrates a problem analysis workbench with a patented semantic knowledgebase, helps engineers and scientists build structure around the innovation process, including such steps as organizing ideas, researching prior patents, exploring potential new markets and competition and evaluating risk so the most lucrative ideas are capitalized on. Invention Machine executives say the timing is ripe for such a tool because companies are facing a number of challenges, including the fact that nearly 70 percent of products will be “sunset” or obsolete by the end of the decade, a rise in global competition and an exodus of staffers involved in product development as they near retirement age.

Making innovation sustainable and predicable is critical as companies look for vehicles to drive profitable growth. “Product development and innovation are too unpredictable … and the idea is to add repeatable best practices to drive innovation,” says Jim Brown, vice president of product innovation and engineering at Aberdeen Group. “This is not a brand new concept — what Invention Machine is doing is consolidating and systematizing a series of proven processes.”

The new Goldfire 4.5, which the company touts as a customer-driven release, incorporates more than 30 improvements, including three new industry-specific Risk Analysis templates. The trio of risk management features is designed to save users time and resources as they work on Failure Mode and Effects Analysis workflows — a structured quality process for evaluating the impact of design or product failures. Specifically, the upgrade includes templates for FMEA procedures specific to the automotive industry along with HAZOP (Hazard and Operability Analysis), which was developed for the chemical and energy industry, but is being increasingly used elsewhere.

“Risk analysis is a key area that a lot of companies have to deal with and we’ve expanded it in this version,” says Invention Machine Chief Technology Officer Jim Todhunter. “We had a generic capability, but we now offer very customizable, industry-specific risk analysis capabilities, which lets companies in those sectors look at risk factors relevant to their products.”

Other highlights of the new release include improved multi-lingual support for French and German along with enhancements in search performance and other administrative upgrades. Support for Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 is also part of the new release. Base pricing for Goldfire is around $100,000.

	GoldFire Innovator 4.5 has enhanced risk management capabilities to help engineers mitigate risks with product development and drive repeatable and sustainable innovation.