Best Practice and Tips and Tricks from Mike Watkins

Last month we visited QFC for a 2 day customer video shoot to capture their Autodesk PLM 360 story so far. We shot on site, in the offices, on the factory floor and even took the sofa's outside to Belton House !! So much fun with the QFC team. Setting up in the QFC Showroom for the interviews On the QFC factory floor Shooting some outside footage ! Ok abit of posing by me, did you expect any less !! Belton House a beautiful place A focus on business process excellence has helped QFC to establish a reputation for product design, excellent service and great product quality. This ensured that QFC continued to grow through what has been the deepest recession in living memory. Of course no business stands still, and right now QFC’s energy is focussed on pushing the boundaries to produce a pipeline of great new products to keep customers excited and this is where Autodesk PLM 360 comes in.  We hope you enjoy this Autodesk PLM 360 customer story...

I thought I'd switch gear this week and talk about another Autodesk product, namely Autodesk  SketchBook® . This  is the ultimate in painting and drawing software.  It helps digital artists and illustrators design with professional-grade perspective tools and intuitive user interface. You can sketch, draw, and paint on any platform it's badass ! This blog post happened by pure chance, let me explain... http://www.autodesk.com/products/sketchbook-pro/overview For those of you that know me well, when I'm not on the road working with our Autodesk PLM 360 customers I like to go and inflict pain on myself in the form of tattooing !. I think I've made quite a good job of it so far ! Last weekend I took a trip to the coast to see a good friend of my Zak Chai, who is the owner of High Tide Tattoo in  Whitstable for a day of pleasure (in my mind anyhow!). When I arrive the kettle goes on and we sit down to discuss what he's going to...

Mike: Morning guys, great to meet you again I'm excited to see how you guys shift 6000 sofas a week ! So tell me about QFC, what are the roots of the company, and what is your secret to success? QFC:  Hi Mike, we were founded in 1993 and have reinvented ourselves several times since then to deal with changing market conditions, most notably 10 years ago when we became the first upholstery manufacturer to offer 7 day lead times. This enabled us to continue to grow our business at a time when the UK upholstery industry was shrinking in the face of fierce competition from China and Eastern Europe. A focus on business process excellence has helped us to establish a reputation for really excellent service and great product quality and this ensured that we continued to grow through what has been the deepest recession in living memory. Of course no business stands still and right now our energy is being directed to ensuring that we focus even more on producing a relentless stre...

Mike: Morning Chris, I struggled with a title for this blog the schoolboy in me wanted to call it so many things !!! but I went with Virginia's one in the end ! Can tell me about Loowatt, what are the roots of the company and what products are you designing? Chris:  Ha ! yes Mike there could have been many more variations to the blog title! Loowatt was founded in 2009 as the outgrowth of CEO Virginia Gardiner’s industrial design degree project at London’s Royal College of Art. Her thesis addressed a self-assigned brief: “To create a waterless, urban toilet system that turns sh*t into money.” Her project questioned the unethical practice of flushing the toilet with drinking water and examined ways to turn human excrement into a commodity rather than a taboo substance to be flushed and forgotten. Today, we are a creative, energetic team working in both United Kingdom and Madagascar. Our vision is to build safe, sustainable and profitable toilet systems.  L...