Challenge: Engineering Design Team Efficiency Improvement

Industry: Engineering Design | 30% reduction in design time

Consulting Technology

An engineering design company marketed themselves as the fastest turn-around design firm but only slightly outperformed competitors. Our Consulting team discovered their bottleneck was finding parts with required specifications across 100 suppliers with multiple catalogues. We implemented a locally hosted RAG-based AI system.

The Challenge

An engineering design company had a clear market positioning as the fastest turn-around design firm in their area, and they did maintain this advantage, but only slightly outperformed competitors. Our Consulting team discovered the primary bottleneck limiting their efficiency:

  • Difficulty finding parts that matched required specifications
  • Reliance on physical and digital catalogs from nearly 100 unique suppliers
  • Multiple catalogs per supplier for various product ranges
  • Time-consuming manual search process for components like fans with specific size, flow, and pressure requirements
  • Inefficient workflow that prevented significant improvements in overall design time
  • Manual process that limited their ability to substantially outperform competitors

The company needed a technological solution to address this discovery bottleneck while maintaining their competitive positioning.

Our Integrated Solution

Our Consulting and Technology teams implemented a comprehensive AI-based solution:

Consulting Assessment:

  • Identified the specific bottleneck in the design process
  • Evaluated the scope: 100+ suppliers with multiple catalogs each
  • Quantified the impact on overall design efficiency
  • Recommended a technology-based solution to automate the search process

Technology Implementation:

  • Implemented a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) based AI system
  • Designed for local hosting to ensure data security and control
  • Procured hardware solution for less than R60,000
  • Ingested over 400 unique supplier catalogs
  • Processed over 200,000 pages of technical documentation
  • Developed capability to provide product suggestions based on engineering specifications
  • Created search functionality to match requirements like fan size, flow, and pressure

The solution was specifically designed to address the core bottleneck while being cost-effective and secure.

The Results

The implementation of the AI-powered catalog system delivered significant improvements:

  • Product selection speed increased by 5x
  • Overall design time reduced by 30%
  • Eliminated manual catalog searching bottleneck
  • Significantly outperformed competitors in turn-around time
  • Improved accuracy in finding parts with exact specifications
  • Cost-effective solution (less than R60,000 in hardware)
  • Local hosting ensuring data security and system availability
  • Enhanced competitive advantage through technology implementation

The solution transformed the engineering firm from a fast design company to a significantly faster one, creating a more substantial competitive advantage in the market while reducing the time engineers spent on manual product searches.