Tom Flanagan is the owner and chief designer for New Product Design.
On graduating from The Queens University of Belfast with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering Tom worked as a Design and Development Engineer at De Lorean Motor Cars, responsible for more than 25 projects, from fuel system evaluation and calibration to resolving throttle issues, suspension issues and designing a number of test rigs for verification of components and systems.
After the closure of De Lorean, Tom spent three years in a heavy engineering firm, followed by three years in a Dublin-based company as a CAD/CAM research and design engineer. In 1989, Tom joined a transportation equipment company in Galway, Ireland as a CAD specialist and Design Engineer. In 1993 he transferred to the corporate headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota specializing initially in CAD/CAM and CAE, and with additional training and experience in DFA, DFMA, DFMEA, project management, ISO compliance, Quality Systems and Six-Sigma.
In 1996, Tom attended training in Toronto in the use of Alias Studio software for Industrial Design, followed by extensive training in the use of Pro-Engineer. From 1997, Tom began to switch focus from Mechanical design to Industrial Design, leading to the re-design of the company’s flagship product in 2001, which gained the company an IDSA/Business Week Gold IDEA award.
Since 2001, Tom has been involved in Industrial Design, Ergonomics, HMI design and the design of controllers and enclosures for medium/large equipment and has worked in a wide variety of industries, including Medical, Consumer and Industrial.
Tom has been using SolidWorks for all new design projects since 2006.