The Digital Age Shows Its Dark Side
By Mike Baker
The author is CAD Systems Manager, General Dynamics Land Systems and a member of the DPN Editorial Advisory Board.
Do you think the piracy and copying of digital data is just a problem for the music and software industries? If youíre like most people in manufacturing, you probably donít give it much thought.
Well, maybe you should.
 Donít get me wrong. I think itís great ñ the new computers, the Internet, the speed at which we can work, the ability to trade information back and forth, the development of new products on schedules that were only a dream 20 years ago.
On top of everything, the products are better, the accuracy of our designs has improved dramatically and the elimination of errors has removed the fear of getting a phone call from the plant floor. So with newer, faster computer hardware and software, things are only going to get better, right? Maybe.
There is a dark side to our move into the Digital Age. As with most technological advancements, there are people who will use them for unsavory purposes.
I recently attended a conference where an engineer from a major golf club manufacturer spoke about how his business had been affected by offshore cloning. The speakerís message was pretty basic: the company canít stop the cloning and its only hope of remaining competitive and profitable is to have a constant stream of new products in the pipeline, ready for release.
At the same conference, a professor from an offshore university talked about his engineering facultyís state-of-the-art equipment, including a large number of laser scanners and CAD stations equipped with reverse engineering software.
Alarmist warnings? They are easy to dismiss, and thatís exactly what I did until I received two e-mail links.
The first link took me to a site where, for $150, I could purchase a 3D Studio Max model that was remarkably close to the original of my companyís main product. Seeing a CAD model of our product for sale on the web caused quite a stir, and it was quite a relief when the model turned out to be accurate for visual purposes only.
Sharing files should be on
a "need to know" basis only
The second link was far more alarming. It took me to a site where a company has reverse engineered a component of my companyís product, removed all identifying marks and then proceeded to create a full set of drawings to be used for obtaining quotes and eventual manufacturing.
How would this affect your spare parts business? How many of you could survive knowing that as soon as your company released a new product someone else copied it, and more quickly than ever before?
How can you ensure that your CAD model and therefore your intellectual property will be used ethically? You canít. The only method that can truly be relied upon is to be aware of the data you are exchanging and try to limit what you give away.
Be aware that todayís CAD models carry far more information than a simple set of blueprints and in a lot of cases the models may have all the information required to manufacture the product.
When determining how much data youíre going to give away think of my latest favorite acronym ìN2Kî and ask the question ìwhat do they Need to Know?î
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