Vistagy has made two executive personnel appointments to help the company capitalise on its record multi-million-dollar revenue growth and global market opportunities. Ed Bernardon has been appointed to the newly established position of Vice President of Business Development. He will lead the company's evolving business efforts to partner with the world's leading aerospace, automotive, marine and medical equipment manufacturers to identify new product opportunities, as well as position and launch newly developed specialised engineering software.

In addition, the company has hired Mel Passarelli as Vice President of Worldwide Sales to lead and grow its global sales team and further penetrate product design and manufacturing organisations throughout Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific region.

Bernardon was previously Vice President of Sales for Vistagy.

During his tenure, he drove the sales of products and services, resulting in a compound annual growth rate of 28% over the past seven years.

He also played an instrumental role in identifying and launching new products.

As Vice President of Business Development, he will leverage this expertise and work with team members from across the company to initiate new global market opportunities, and position and launch specialised software solutions powered by Vistagy's unique EnCapta technology.

'Vistagy has historically done a great job of recognising growth opportunities'.

'In order to exploit these opportunities, we need to introduce new software applications to the market that solve specific, complex design and manufacturing problems', said Bernardon.

'With our business development organisation, we will more efficiently bring new software solutions to the market to help our customers develop products more quickly and cost-effectively than ever before'.

Passarelli will apply his experience and strong track record of building international sales organisations to grow Vistagy's sales staff and further penetrate new global markets.

He has worked in the engineering and enterprise software industry for more than 15 years.

He was most recently Vice President of Sales at Aspect Software, Other highlights of his experience include his role as Senior Sales Leader at Intergraph Corporation, a publicly-traded, former Fortune 500 company, and for helping several Boston-area software companies, both public and private, achieve strong sales success and growth.

Passarelli holds a BA and MBA from the State University of New York in Buffalo, and a Juris Doctorate from Suffolk University School of Law in Boston.

'I joined Vistagy because the company is growing so quickly and employs a world-class sales organisation that has a proven history of capitalising on its many global market opportunities', said Passarelli.

'Vistagy's expansion is unlike anything I've seen in other software companies recently'.

'I'm looking forward to helping Vistagy break into new markets that need our unique products to help engineers realise their design goals'.

'I'm extremely happy to be part of such a progressive organisation'.

'The executive management team has set some aggressive sales and new product goals for our company'.

'Having Mel and Ed in these new roles gives us the best chance to succeed and achieve these goals', said Steve Luby, President and CEO at Vistagy.

'This is an exciting time for Vistagy as we continue to add talented people to our sales team and across the company'.

'With new software offerings being developed in the coming months, I am confident that Mel, Ed and their teams will continue to drive Vistagy to the forefront of the product development community'.

More than three quarters of plastics professionals surveyed are searching for answers to improve their business by learning about new technologies through demonstrations at NPE.
NPE's opening day is just around the corner and many plastics professionals are more interested in seeking out new technologies to help their business than negotiating contracts and making purchasing decisions. IDES, the fastest growing search destination and informational resource for the plastics industry, recently surveyed customers and found more than three quarters are searching for answers to improve their business by learning about new technologies through demonstrations at NPE 2006 in Chicago, Illinois. The survey also revealed that unlike European trade events, delegates to this year's NPE will not be planning to make buying decisions at the show, but rather intend to investigate products and services, and meet with representatives in person on big ticket items such as processing machinery and plastic materials.

Focusing on business versus pleasure, delegates do not plan to attend parties or schmooze with customers.

Additionally there is low interest when it comes to finding new vendors to replace current providers or collecting free stuff from exhibitors (also known as 'swag').

Several resin buyers will focus on finding lower cost materials as resin prices continue to rise.

Other notable aspects of the response include the following trends.

About half plan to meet with specific plastics professionals in person.

Half will investigate plastics machinery and seek out answers to specific processing problems.

40% hope to find an alternative resin to replace a current in-use grade.

This survey was conducted by email in March 2006 and queried IDES customers in product design and plastics processing on topics relating to NPE 2006 from 19th to 23rd June in Chicago, Illinois (USA).

Tools added to design for manufacture and assembly software for comparing the cost of automatic versus manual product assembly and for estimating the cost to manufacture PCBs.
Boothroyd Dewhurst has announced DFMA 2006, a version of the company's design for manufacture and assembly software. The software contains versions of both modules in the integrated DFMA suite: DFA v9.3 and DFM Concurrent Costing v2.2. DFMA 2006 software guides engineers through the process of simplifying a product design, then quickly estimates assembly labour and part manufacturing costs.

The software isolates the major cost drivers associated with a wide range of choices for part manufacture and finishing.

Tools have been added for comparing the cost of automatic versus manual product assembly and for estimating the cost to manufacture PCBs.

Through a quantitative, multidisciplinary approach to cost assessment, DFMA helps companies create products that are more economical to manufacture.

When products have fewer parts, companies have fewer digital archives to maintain and can streamline suppliers, inventory and shipping.

When products are easier to manufacture, companies can improve factory throughput and overall resource use.

'We set our DFMA redesign goals at 50% for cost reductions in labour and assembly, and typically we meet or exceed those targets', said Mike Shipulski, Director of Engineering at Hypertherm.

'Our management is always happy about achieving these significant financial numbers, and they know that the total savings are far-reaching, extending beyond manufacturing to the reduction of facility, handling and overhead costs'.

The software contains a set of industry-tested early cost models for material and manufacturing processes, including sheet metalworking, machining, structural foam moulding, plastic extrusion, injection moulding, thermoforming, blow moulding, cold and hot die casting, hot forging, powder metal processing, sand casting and investment casting.

Two processes have been added for estimating manufacturing costs.

A PCB process incorporates cost models for bare board manufacture as well as population, or assembly, of the board.

The cost estimate for bare board manufacture is based on complexity and includes costs for internal and external circuit generation, lamination, AOI testing, hole drilling, solder masking, legend printing and final circuit testing.

With this capability, product development teams can include estimates for PCBs in early cost profiles for electromechanical devices.

An automatic assembly process estimates the cost of assembling a product on an automatic high-speed assembly machine.

For comparison purposes, the software also computes the estimated cost of assembling the same product on a manual assembly line.