Autodesk invests heavily in its Advanced Manufacturing Solutions

Engineering companies are changing fast, becoming empowered by new digital technology that did not exist a few years ago. Autodesk, a global company that has supported engineers for 37 years, is at the forefront of this digital disruption – its suite of Advanced Manufacturing Solutions has helped engineers and businesses to design and achieve more, realising their imagination as products and fuelling their growth.

In response to the speed of change, Autodesk is investing heavily in its manufacturing solution brands – PowerMill, PowerShape, PowerInspect, FeatureCAM, Moldflow, Netfabb, Fusion 360 and more – in a two-pronged strategy covering product improvements, a new go-to-market channel and a focus on more local training and support for customers.

Autodesk has made improvements across its Advanced Manufacturing Product portfolio and has developed new features to provide a palette of richer functions to engineers. These new features have been selected from rigorous customer feedback via a Customer Advisory Board. Applications engineers globally have worked on the improvements, new functions, and technology integration striving constantly to answer engineering customers’ needs.

It has invested a huge amount of combined resource from across its developer community into this vitally important product suite because it knows manufacturing is changing fast, and customers’ needs are changing.

Subscribers to Autodesk’s main advanced manufacturing solutions family are also now entitled to Fusion 360, the powerful integrated CAD, CAM, and CAE solution, to create a broad end-to-end solution and a high level of innovation for machine and tooling shops.

Mike Malkin, senior director of global digital manufacturing said:

The industry is changing fast, engineers demand new powerful solutions at an earlier stage and smaller firms have more ambition. We have invested heavily in response, we have improved quality in our solutions, they are more powerful, and we are now giving customers of any size access to advanced tools like generative design.

The second big change is that Autodesk has re-built its go-to-market channels to better align and serve its customers at a local point, from the microbusiness to the global corporation. This involves recruiting far more partners and going to market in a more unified, determined way – this is called MAKE.

David Young, senior director of digital manufacturing sales said:

We have made investments in our advanced manufacturing channel, which we refer to as our MAKE channel, a new high touch, specialised partner channel created to supply the full suite of solutions including PowerMill, FeatureCAM, Netfabb, TruX, Fusion 360, etc, in a more local, customer-centric way. MAKE is recruiting our best existing resellers, legacy Delcam partners, and new partners that have stronger relationships with local customers.

Under the MAKE channel, local partners will serve local customers better and provide a higher level of service which these solutions require. The new channel will deliver more training, technical support, post-processes, implementation and solutions consulting, especially for implementing new technologies like Adaptive and Hybrid manufacturing.

Autodesk has recognized that the most effective way to help our Advanced Manufacturing customers is via a network of local, specialist operators.

The number, diversity, and knowledge of partners is key to the MAKE program. These include existing partners including D3, Hagerman, Ketiv, NTI, Negroni, and Applicit, then legacy master resellers are joining, which include Design & Software, AMS, Norcam, and Nexgen. New start-up partners like Premiership Solutions, and Simulation partners who are adding the CAM feature, and vice versa, are also joining.

MAKE’s aim is to give all customers the best expertise and higher service levels. A great example of this is Premiership Solutions, a start-up launched in April 2019 by former Autodesk employees as the first UK reseller under the MAKE brand.

“The difference is the deep knowledge on all the solutions our guys can bring. We can simplify the end user’s workflow, we provide hardware configuration and can supply them with a server if needed,” said Premiership’s Justin Barnes. MAKE gives customers complimentary access to Fusion 360 included with the main product suite. “Until now, some customers did not know how Fusion 360 can complement PowerMill and other manufacturing solutions so well. Bringing Fusion to them is very powerful.”

Premiership Solutions will take customers to visit Autodesk’s Technology Centre, Birmingham, in June. “This is added value for customers under the MAKE channel – they can see all the new manufacturing technology at the ATC, ask questions and this helps refine their products.”

Autodesk www.autodesk.com/make