Engineers can use such analysis to get ideas for new products and begin to study their feasibility. The goal is to have any engineer be able to access any other engineer’s research.
“The people in the trenches can’t wait for that day to arrive,” he says.
Although the goal is more openness, not all data stay open forever. For example, as a project gets closer to the patent application stage, access to the data about it is clipped to fewer people, Currier says.
He adds that since installing Goldfire, patent applications are up compared to similar engineering groups that do not use the Goldfire tool. “We have had to educate people that we aren’t throwing security out the window but making valuable knowledge available to the organization,” he says.