CIMdata Publications
Digital Manufacturing: Moving the Design into Production
Ed Miller, President, CIMdata and John MacKrell, Senior Consultant, CIMdata
The concept of defining the manufacturing processes and plans along with and based on the overall product definition is not new. In fact, many initiatives over the past few decades have focused on this critical aspect of product definition. Examples of these initiatives include design-for-assembly, design-for-manufacturability, concurrent engineering, and computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) to name just a few. These initiatives were all concerned with ensuring that manufacturing process definition was treated as an integral component of the product definition process; to ensure that manufacturing issues were considered during the design process. So, while digital manufacturing is not a new concept, it is the current incarnation of a desirable theme in industrial companies—ensuring that products are defined and designed so that they can be manufactured effectively, resulting in high quality products that can be produced at the optimal cost.
CIMdata defines digital manufacturing as, “solutions that support manufacturing process planning collaboration among engineering disciplines, such as design and manufacturing. Digital manufacturing solutions incorporate best practices and allow access to the full digital product definition, including tooling and manufacturing process designs. Digital manufacturing is an integrated suite of tools that work with product definition data to support tool design, manufacturing process design, visualization, simulation, and other analyses necessary to optimize the manufacturing process.”
Digital manufacturing allows industrial companies to transform how they define their manufacturing processes. This is achieved by creating an environment in which manufacturing process definition is conducted in collaboration with (i.e., concurrently with) product design activities. Digital manufacturing integrates design and manufacturing data to support process design and simulation capabilities that have not been previously available.
Digital manufacturing enables collaboration on a much greater scale than has previously been achieved, thus fostering innovation in product and product-related process definition. It is an integral component of product lifecycle management (PLM) initiatives, and is essential for any industrial manufacturing company that wishes to pursue a comprehensive PLM strategy. PLM provides the data and process management environment that allows design information to be used directly in digital manufacturing activities.
One of the important characteristics of digital manufacturing is that it fully incorporates the product and process definition into a comprehensive and consistent approach. Thus, digital manufacturing impacts the overall product lifecycle, but is primarily focused on supporting the portion of the lifecycle that defines the manufacturing engineering activities. It also clarifies the boundaries between PLM and enterprise resource planning (ERP); two primary areas of IT investment for industrial companies, facilitating the development of integrations between these two major solutions.
Development of technologies that support digital manufacturing has been under way for many years, and these technologies have truly progressed to the point where they offer substantial capabilities. The impressive environments that these technologies now enable begins to deliver on the vision that industry has had for many, many years for the effective use of information-based solutions that bridge engineering and manufacturing.
The breadth of digital manufacturing solutions have continued to evolve and mature. Today, full manufacturing facility definition, including tooling, assembly lines, workcenters, ergonomics, and resource planning is an integral part of the manufacturing definition environment. A more complete understanding of the production of products, including machine operations and human interaction in assembly are the result. Simulations of all facets of production can be developed and utilized to validate and optimize the processes. Feedback from actual production operations can be incorporated and used to modify the process definitions to take maximum advantage of real experiences and better utilize capabilities and resources. The virtual product definition can now be observed as a full simulation of the creation of the product, from raw materials through final assembly.
Digital manufacturing’s role within a full PLM initiative is to provide the bridge between the product definition including both configuration of components and definition of the manufacturing processes necessary to produce the product and the actual manufacturing production activities within the enterprise. Digital manufacturing, as a component of PLM, focuses on the definition of the virtual product. Although digital manufacturing can provide benefits when used as a stand-alone initiative, it is most effective when it is as an integral component of a full enterprise PLM strategy and incorporated into a broader PLM program.
Technologies to support digital manufacturing, along with industry best practices defining the methodologies that most effectively utilize digital manufacturing, continue to be developed by a wide range of suppliers. These suppliers, in partnership with forward-thinking industrial companies, are continuing to push the bounds of knowledge in this exciting area.
The suppliers of digital manufacturing solutions can be segmented into a number of groups. The broadest range of digital manufacturing solutions are currently being offered by some of the traditional suppliers of broad-based PLM solutions. Among the major suppliers of high-end PLM solutions, Dassault Systèmes with their DELMIA suite of offerings, and UGS with their E-factory suite (including capabilities provided through their business relationship with Tecnomatix) are the two most well known suppliers of digital manufacturing solutions. These two companies have devoted the most attention by PLM providers to digital manufacturing and clearly consider it to be a fundamental component of their overall PLM philosophy and solutions. Their suites of offerings are very broad in scope. Other major PLM leaders are also either beginning to offer digital manufacturing solutions or are recognizing the value of digital manufacturing and are aligning themselves with partners as appropriate. Much activity is anticipated from these suppliers over the coming months and years.
A number of well-recognized suppliers focus specifically on digital manufacturing as their only area of business. Tecnomatix, Polyplan, and Valor are the most well known of these suppliers. However, these companies don’t all focus on digital manufacturing solutions for the same kind of businesses. For example, Valor focuses exclusively on digital manufacturing for electronics manufacturers. Of these companies, Tecnomatix is the largest and currently provides the broadest suite of solutions among them. Their relationship with UGS provides additional exposure to their offerings.
In addition to the well-known suppliers, there are a large number of relatively small organizations around the world that provide unique offerings that focus on some particular aspect of digital manufacturing. Often, these suppliers only service a limited geographic area as well. While not large in size, these suppliers often provide valuable extensions to the broader offerings of the larger suppliers of broad-functionality digital manufacturing solutions.
The largest source of support for digital manufacturing has traditionally been in-house developments, with a large number of these having been based on tools such as Excel. Although typically relatively crude in nature, these developments have provided an important service as companies have struggled with the challenges of digital manufacturing long before substantial commercial solutions were available. As commercial solutions become more capable, visible, and accessible, they will undoubtedly take over the roles provided by many of these in-house custom developments.
Benefits that have been derived from implementing a digital manufacturing strategy and solutions include:
- Shortened product development cycles
- Early validation of manufacturing processes and faster production ramp up
- Faster time-to-market
- Reduced manufacturing costs
- Support for lean manufacturing and agility initiatives
- Enabling “design-for-X” initiatives such as design-for-manufacturability, design-for-assembly, etc.
- Improved product quality
- Enhanced product knowledge dissemination
- Improved plant safety
- Many others
The conclusion is that digital manufacturing is not just some new suite of technologies that are in the process of being evaluated to assess whether or not they can provide value. Rather, digital manufacturing has been implemented in many industry-leading companies around the world, and it has been validated by demonstrated benefits that those companies have received.