Since in-person trade shows and interviews are not possible right now and into the foreseeable future, via Zoom we recently interviewed Ed Walsh, VP of Global Sales at Sigmetrix. During the interview, he spoke about how the company is focused on helping customers design and build better products through mechanical variation management. “We’re unique because Sigmetrix is a software company, a service company, and a training company that together provide a solutions approach for our customers,” Walsh said.

When asked for a little background on himself and Sigmetrix, Walsh said, “I’ve been with Sigmetrix for 14 years, and have been in this industry for over 20. Over that time, I’ve witnessed a need that customers are starting to convey – they want to get the most out of their technology investments with the most efficient use of their resources. This includes things like having solutions that scale to multiple skill levels in an organization. We address this need by having our cornerstone tolerance analysis tool (CETOL 6 Sigma) that is used for advanced applications because it’s very powerful, but also a 1D tool (EZtol), that’s relatively simple to use. We are seeing an increased demand for tools that teach people geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) as they use them by incorporating training solutions in all of our tools. We feel that that education helps establish a use case, or ability to be used, by that whole spectrum of users”.

“Because too much confidence is often placed in 3D models alone, we also see that customers want a tool that can be used in the multiple stages of the product development process. For example, traditionally, tolerance stack-up was done at the end of the design process just before it went into production. It was more of a validation tool, whether they were using spreadsheets or other tools”.

“If I look at the best of our customers versus the rest of our customers, just like most other simulation tools, they’ve shifted it earlier into the product development process, into the concept, and even R&D stages, to get an order of magnitude, a ‘what if’ type of analysis, on what’s better and what’s not. Our CETOL tool would be an example where people have shifted that usage. Customers also want to have decision-making from these analysis tools that can be addressed by multiple tiers of accountability in an organization”.

MCADCafe Interviews Ed Walsh, VP Global Sales, Sigmetrix

Making the Case for GD&T and Tolerance Analysis

While Sigmetrix considers itself a niche company for GD&T and tolerance analysis and mechanical variation management, it is a very important niche that goes well beyond product validation and can be applied in all phases of development, design, and inspection that can help customers make better decisions to ensure meeting their product requirements.

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