CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

3 September 2009

Events News

aPriori 7 Delivers Signficant Expansion of Manufacturing Processes and VPE Configuration

aPriori announced the availability of aPriori 7, the newest version of its Product Cost Management software platform. aPriori provides manufacturers real-time visibility to product cost that supports:

• Launching New Products at or Below Target Cost
• Maximizing Cost Savings on Re-Work Projects
• Never Overpaying for Outsourced Parts
• Increasing the Accuracy and Speed of RFQ Responses

With aPriori 7 discrete manufacturers can quickly and reliably cost a wider range of manufacturing processes than ever before, configure Virtual Production Environments (VPEs) to include manufacturing processes and capabilities for a specific factory, and simplify the process of maintaining their VPEs. A summary of new functionality introduced with this release is provided below:

Expanded Capabilities to Cost Additional Manufacturing Processes and Configure VPEs – examples of the capabilities now possible through aPriori Services with aPriori 7 include:

Adding progressive die stamping at a Sheet Metal VPE

Implementing an alternative casting process such as permanent mold or investment casting at a Casting VPE

Configuring machining operations such as tapping, thread milling, and deep drilling at a Machining VPE

Configuring special surface treatment steps such as chrome plating or heat treatment at a VPE

Configuring a VPE to support user specification of manufacturing details, such as special handling times

Configuring a VPE to display additional output information, such as the total number of hits estimated for a turret press

Enhanced Sheet Metal Cost Model – A new version of the aPriori Sheet Metal process group is now available with several substantial enhancements over prior versions, including:

Routings – Users now have access to a more flexible set of routings and easier control over the inclusion or exclusion of optional routing steps, such as painting or plating.

Manufacturing Rules – aPriori will now automatically alter a routing based on available tolerance and roughness information on part features or specific Geometric Cost Drivers.

Geometry Analysis – Sheet Metal geometry analysis has been improved to include handling parts with rounds on the part edge, enhanced handling of blind holes, and substantial improvements in analyzing candidate setup axes for secondary machining.

Enhanced VPE Maintenance – The VPE management tool has been improved to enable customers to define, edit, and maintain all data at their VPEs, including: maintaining material, machine, workcenter, lookup table (e.g., cut rate), toolshop and tool material data. These capabilities, coupled with our VPE Creation module will allow a customer to rapidly build VPEs to meet their evolving use cases of their user base, and maintain those VPEs with little to no assistance from aPriori

Complete 3D CAD Independence – Since version 6.0, aPriori expanded support for all major CAD platforms including CATIA v5, Siemens NX, Solidworks and Autodesk Inventor. With aPriori 7, complete 3D CAD independence has been achieved by providing the capability to cost STEP and Parasolid parts & assemblies. Support for the STEP neutral file format will allow customers to cost models from any other 3D CAD application that may still be in use at their facility.

“The aPriori product management and development teams have spent a significant amount of time working with customers over the past year to understand what are the most important development projects from their perspective,” said Jeremy Rishel, Chief Technology Officer at aPriori. “By far, completeness of cost ranked the highest across our entire customer base. With aPriori 7, our Product Cost Management software platform has taken a significant step forward toward achieving this objective by enabling the addition of numerous specialized manufacturing processes to existing process groups. In most manufacturing process groups, the quantity of operations now available has more than doubled. Furthermore, the ability to implement a wide variety of customizations to aPriori VPEs will allow customers to finely tune their virtual factories and yield an accurate cost assessment in a way that was never possible before.”

Webinar Scheduled for September 17th

aPriori will showcase the newest version of their Product Cost Management platform on September 17th, from 2:00pm to 3:00pm EDT, in a public webinar available to everyone. For more information and to register for this event, please visit this website:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/368809576

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