posted on 7/21/2011 10:38:59 AM
A new generation of PLM software helps engineers leverage each other’s work, improving product and process efficiency.
How do you engineer good outcomes? In a typical manufacturing organization, there are engineers in product development, manufacturing, quality, and safety, each working on their part of the product or process. To more efficiently achieve the benefits that each engineering discipline seeks, companies are finding it beneficial for these engineers to work together more effectively. That typically means collaborating and sharing information.
That may not sound daunting. For many years, design for manufacturability has brought industrial engineers into the mechanical product design process. Mechatronics, for instance, is a branch of engineering that brings together electronics, software, and mechanical engineers. Yet each of these groups of engineers often works in a task-focused system, with an electronic design automation (EDA) system for electronics, application or embedded software development for software, and mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) for mechanical designers. One of the major focal points for product lifecycle management (PLM) systems today is to ensure that engineering disciplines and operations can, and do, leverage each other’s work to improve company results.
In a presentation at the Siemens PLM User Conference this spring, Ron Adams of AM General got right to the heart of one of the realities of automation in manufacturing—people are often still part of the system. AM General makes specialized vehicles, diesel engines, transmissions, and parts for military and commercial customers. The company uses Siemens Teamcenter Requirements Management to automate the creation of inspection specifications on demand. Every change to a process step can trigger notifications to the “owners” of connected inspection specifications. Thus, it was vital to avoid creating too many notifications and risk that people would ignore them.
The conference also highlighted Shop Floor Connect for Teamcenter, as well as the newly launched Teamcenter Mobility module running on an iPad, which can access engineering data while inspecting the inside of a production machine.
As part of a corporation that also manufactures automation systems, Siemens PLM Software has a unique perspective on production technology. However, it is not the only PLM software provider connecting design and manufacturing engineering data to the real world of the factory. The latest version of PTC’s Windchill PLM platform also incorporates quality and regulatory elements, in addition to other elements of systems engineering and mechatronics.
Dassault Systèmes also has interesting capabilities linking its process and product engineering software with its plant operations applications. Not only in discrete manufacturing industries, but also in pharmaceutical, the combination of Enovia PLM with Exalead data search and association, Geensoft process simulation for NPI production simulation on actual control equipment, and Intercim Pertinence’s best-practices analysis capabilities allows breakthrough results. A customer at Eli Lilly discussed new product introductions in which the Geensoft capabilities allowed the drug-maker to simulate the entire plant down to sensors and deploy the control-system, leveraging simulations for system testing—all while delivering the project three months ahead of schedule.
In this system, manufacturing engineers are able to make better decisions that support greater production yield and improve product reliability. Another Intercim customer says it allows the company to understand why processes deteriorate and thus improve quality, security, and profitability.
The message from these examples is clear. The era in which each engineering discipline – design, manufacturing, quality, and so on—maintained its own data is coming to a close. The vision, first articulated in the 1960s, that the computer could support a single central source of product and process information is becoming a reality at a justifiable cost.
Julie Fraser is president of Cambashi Inc., the U.S. arm of the industrial-focused analyst/consulting/market research firm based in the United Kingdom.