CoLab Launches AI Solution

CoLab, a technology company building collaboration solutions for mechanical engineering and hardware development teams, has launched new artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help mitigate the risks of product delays, quality issues and revenue loss. 

This design review solution applies AI and machine learning (ML) to a natural language dataset. The solution is sold through a partnership program. 

“Most product design teams still have to rely on manual processes for design reviews,” says Adam Keating, co-founder and CEO of CoLab. “This means technical feedback is shared in meetings and documented inconsistently with admin-intensive tools. The result is slow and ineffective decision-making and an ever present risk that when key subject matter experts leave the company or retire, their expertise will go with them.”

CoLab’s core design engagement system (DES) enables teams to run asynchronous 2D and 3D model reviews that generate a database of technical comments automatically, as a byproduct of engineers performing their daily tasks. The platform injects an organization's subject-matter expertise into every design without SMEs having to participate in every design review.

The new launch applies ML to this system to surface similar design issues and lessons learned. It works by using a similarity engine to identify drawings and models similar to the one currently under review, analyzing technical comments from past reviews on those files, and highlighting useful historical feedback to engineers. These insights can then be used to inform better and quicker design decisions, ensure the same design mistakes do not happen repeatedly, and give engineers more time to focus on complex issues and innovation, according to CoLab.

“We have a clear product roadmap to deliver the tools the industry needs with new launches in 2025 as well.  The reality is, manufacturing organizations that do not leverage the benefits of AI quickly risk being left behind,” Keating concludes.

The technology company is researching and developing tools that will bring downstream data, including warranty claims and scrap data, into upstream design reviews for the first time, and auto-review functionality that can complete basic design checks based on user-defined checklists. 

As generative AI is a developing technology, CoLab has strict security policies to mitigate the risk to intellectual property (IP) and does not leverage or use data or knowledge across customers or to develop its own models.  

About CoLab

CoLab is a technology company based in Newfoundland, Canada, building collaboration software-as-a-service solutions for mechanical engineering and hardware development teams. CoLab’s platform helps manufacturers of mechanically complex products strengthen and streamline design review processes through its DES.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.