Hitachi Uses CAD to Speed Power Plant Design

Hitachi, a major Japanese provider of high-technology products and services, adopted the latest CAD technology to improve its process of building power plants. With earlier CAD systems, engineers created drawings of components and placed them in relation to one another, but it was necessary to generate paper drawings and build plastic scale models the size of basketball courts. These models were needed to visualize the entire project and discuss specific modifications with customers. The scale models were often weeks behind the current status of the design. In addition, they were too small to depict everyday problems such as difficulties in disengaging a valve for inspection.

The new CAD systems permit engineers to design any component and then see a photo-realistic representation of both the component and its relationship with other components. The system can also use the design information to perform animated simulations of the moving parts. This helps engineers find design flaws long before they would become schedule-delaying crises. For example, it is possible to insert a simulated maintenance person into a power-plant model and test how hard it would be to reach and disengage a valve. Using this system saved 250,000 hours of engineering time, reduced rework, cut test time from 18 months to 9, and made it unnecessary to build plastic models or produce paper drawings.

Questions:

1. Use the WCA framework to organize your understanding of this vignette and to identify important topics that are not mentioned.

2. What issues (if any) make this case interesting from an international or intercultural viewpoint?

3. Assume you could develop this CAD system further in any direction. What additional capabilities and features might conceivably be added?

Source: Churbuck, David. Computers' New Frontier. Forbes, Nov. 26, 1990, pp. 257-264.

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