Out of many one – a surprisingly large number of parts

The photo collages from Todd McLellan demonstrates spectacularly our everyday part diversity

In the time you read the article, try to figure out how many single parts you had contact with this morning. The number may be surprisingly high and almost impossible to count. Nowadays in our highly technological world we have to handle an inpossible abundance of electronical and mechanical devices. The Canadian photo artist Todd McLellan decided to take a closer look on our daily devices and patiently dissasembled them part by part. These pictures show a facinating variety of components. Even a simple bicycle from the 1980's is constructed from 893 individual parts.

Even a simple device like a toaster from the 1970's is made of 151 individual parts. A microwave from 2006 consists of a comparatively moderate number of 212 components.

The need for space grows exponentially without the part management.

For the lay man, this numbers may sound surprisingly high, but for the manufacturing industry this can become a huge problem: With every generation of new products the inventory expands with new- and spare parts. Even if products will be produced only for a short period of time spare parts have to be kept available. If every new part had to be developed from scratch the necessary space in the stock would grow expotentially.

Luckily, you don't have to reinvent everytime the wheel for innovative products. It is easier to use existing parts for a newly developed products. To find the fitting components in a comprehensive part library isn't easy at all. This is the reason why it is so important for constructors and engineers not only to have access to all product catalogs, but also to be able to find all the right parts quickly. One solution for this problem is the strategic part management software PARTsolutions with its GEOsearch function. Through the geometrical affinity search (Topology-, Raw part-, Sketchsearch etc.) custom made components can be compared with already exisitng parts from the electronic product catalogs Another step to reduce part diversity is the predefinition of prefered parts and –suppliers. This ensures savings for procurement and logistics while guaranteeing that projects can be realized with optimal components.

For more information about PARTsolutions's strategic part management and GEOsearch, click here: www.cadenas.de/en/geosearch