{"id":2135,"date":"2017-09-01T09:36:21","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T16:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.plm.automation.siemens.com\/t5\/Teamcenter-Blog\/Shape-Search-for-Engineering-Productivity\/ba-p\/430292"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:46:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:46:44","slug":"shape-search-for-engineering-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/shape-search-for-engineering-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"Shape Search for Engineering Productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This article, \u201cSearch for Engineering Productivity\u201d, introduces a new series on the business value of geometric search, or <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.plm.automation.siemens.com\/global\/en\/products\/plm-components\/geolus.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Shape Search<\/em><\/a><em>, a new technology available in Active Workspace. Shape Search can help you reach greater returns on your Teamcenter investment, by enriching the user experience with a more intuitive way to find, share and reuse product information than text search, alone.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Catch up on the whole series by reading <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/Geometric-Search-for-Part-Standardization-and-Reuse\/\">part 2<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/Search-with-Geometry-to-find-Ideas-and-Concepts-you-can-Reuse\/\">part 3<\/a>\u00a0,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/Use-Shape-Search-to-Shorten-Time-to-Market\/\">part 4<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/Learn-How-Geometric-Search-Enhances-Innovation\/\">part 5<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start with the easiest and most straightforward value. Shape search lets engineers stop wasting time searching for items. Searching for parts is a huge efficiency killer and takes away time that could be spent innovating, reducing cycle times, or optimizing designs. Inefficiency isn\u2019t just the result of time spent searching. It also includes time recreating information that can\u2019t be located and looking up product information for others. Many engineers are honest in saying that it\u2019s much easier for them to create a new part than to find an existing one. That\u2019s not good for the engineer, because they\u2019re wasting their time recreating things that already exist. It\u2019s also bad for the business, because it leads to part proliferation which is wasteful at an even larger scale (more on that later). Poor search efficiency isn\u2019t just a minor source of frustration, it\u2019s a real business issue.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"lia-inline-image-display-wrapper lia-image-align-center\" style=\"width: 400px\"><span class=\"lia-inline-image-caption\">Non-Value Added Work in Engineering<\/span><\/span>Specifically, \u201c<em>Manufacturers report their engineers spend 1\/3 of their time (on average) on non-value added work<\/em>\u201d and that \u201c<em>the largest contributor to nonvalue added time is related to trying to find information<\/em>,\u201d according to <em>Reducing Non-Value Added Work in Engineering<\/em>. That\u2019s a lot of opportunity to give time back to engineers to spend on designing and innovating.<\/p>\n<p><em>This is an extract from \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.plm.automation.siemens.com\/media\/global\/en\/5%20ways%20Shape%20Search%20Drives%20Business_tcm27-63770.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Five Ways Shape Search Drives Business Value<\/a>\u201d by Jim Brown, President of Tech-Clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><a title=\"About Erwin\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.plm.automation.siemens.com\/t5\/user\/viewprofilepage\/user-id\/12166\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Erwin Argyle <\/a>is a Senior Product Manager and can be contacted for more information on shape search.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article, \u201cSearch for Engineering Productivity\u201d, introduces a new series on the business value of geometric search, or Shape Search, a new technology available in Active Workspace. Shape Search c&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64545,"featured_media":2139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,7],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-plm-foundation","tag-visualization-and-virtual-reality"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2019\/09\/ReducingNonValueAddedWorkInEngineering-Tech-Clarity-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64545"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2135"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3850,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions\/3850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}