The process for designing and engineering products has been reshaped over the past two years due to supply chain challenges, labor shortages and cost savings measures. Traditionally, engineers would design a product for its performance regardless of manufacturer or supplier availability, but the design approach has pivoted to prioritize the availability of components. Similarly, the roles of electrical engineers and mechanical engineers have converged during the design process—previously, the system would be specific to an engineer, but now they are taking a singular solution approach.
This component-driven design approach can make it difficult to think outside the box or consider cost savings. Even if an organization has a big-picture goal of becoming more sustainable or efficient, implementing those goals at the component level can feel out of reach, and it can be hard to know where to start.
These changes in the design of a product—along with constraints from supply chain shortages and workforce challenges—make it more important than ever for engineers to select the appropriate components for the application. HellermannTyton takes an integrated approach in the design, manufacturing and delivery of its products and offers forward-thinking solutions that anticipate customer needs, lower costs and address industry trends.
Trends driving design
HellermannTyton provides customers with solutions to identify, connect, route and secure wire and cable for a variety of industries, including aerospace, automotive, data communication, defense, industrial automation, OEM, rail, solar and wind, truck and heavy equipment and wire processing industries—and many of these industries are going green.
In the automotive sector, the focus has shifted to using sustainable components in vehicles. Recently, Ford worked with HellermannTyton to use components made from fishing nets discarded in the ocean in the design of Ford Bronco Sport vehicles. The white good industry that includes washing machine manufacturers is increasingly focused on reducing waste within their own organizations and addressing end-of-life concerns to keep components of white goods out of the landfills for as long as possible.
Meanwhile, the industrial sector continues to grapple with labor shortages in factories and is in search of component solutions that enable them to manufacture the product with reduced labor. This could include consolidating multiple parts into one component, which reduces part count and cost as well as time to install. There has also been increased focus on considering ergonomics in design and construction—repetitive motion injuries can be avoided by using components that reduce those repetitive movements.
Forward-thinking component solutions
HellermannTyton has helped engineers solve design challenges based on sustainability and efficiency and continues to offer that approach to customers, even if they don’t know they need it. For example, a manufacturer might want to use less energy in running its plant but hasn’t considered how the components used in its machines might be able to affect that. HellermannTyton works with distributors like TTI to assess trends in the industry and find manufacturers that might want to take steps towards reducing their carbon footprint or production costs but don’t know how.
HellermannTyton’s product experts use on-the-floor observations and customer feedback to identify pain points that manufacturers may not know they have and offer solutions that address several challenges at once. For example, a mechanical engineer might default to using nuts and bolts in a product’s design, but HellermannTyton eliminates the need for hardware by building in the fixing to the product. Solutions such as cable ties, fir trees and arrowheads that can simply be pushed into the hole can take the place of the screw. This approach not only reduces part count, cost and labor time but could also address repetitive motion injury.
Another thoughtful solution addresses structural integrity in vehicle chassis or other steel channels that require several holes to affix to the main structure. Because more holes in the steel reduces the material’s integrity, HellermannTyton developed a stud mount fixing that allows engineers to attach many types of parts to an existing bolt by the threads. Cables and wires can be clipped or clamped without drilling another hole or buying another piece of hardware.
In applications that can’t have any holes present, such as round torque tubes in solar products, the brackets can be attached along the edge with adhesives or clips that lock into the substrates.
Guided product selection
In the spirit of offering forward-thinking, cost-effective solutions, HellermannTyton built an online product selector to guide engineers and designers through the process of finding new solutions and design approaches. The selector starts at the high level by assessing what the engineer is trying to do—bundle, secure, route or protect. From there the selector breaks down the different options available, depending on the goal—if the user is trying to bundle, is there an attachment or are there separate bundles? Are they securing to a hole, edge, or something else?
HellermannTyton has continued to build upon its existing products to create more innovative solutions. For example, they found that their round fir tree securing solution can experience minor rotation once it’s pushed into the hole, so they created a solution with an anti-rotation oval fir tree. Similarly, they built bundle separators with a swivel so two bundles next to each other are not parallel and won’t place any stress on the cables.
HellermannTyton’s customer-first approach is evident in the way it keeps tabs on industry trends and challenges, builds innovative solutions to address those, and makes it easy for a wide variety of industries to adopt efficient, cost-effective cable management solutions. HellermannTyton’s partnership with TTI ensures that its components and products are readily available.
