I notice that the folks at DISCUS Software Company have updated their web site and released a new version of their namesake software… It’s worth taking a look to see their offerings for manufacturing engineers and quality assurance technicians.
Almost all manufacturing industries require engineers to create “process plans” — i.e., the documents and illustrations that define how to fabricate and assemble the parts. It’s interesting how a new series of companies have emerged to leverage the model-based enterprise with enhanced software tools. The likely leader in the group is Right Hemisphere with their “Visual Product Communication and Collaboration”. Companies with similar functionality include Quadrispace and Anark. All of these tool sets are geared toward re-purposing the 3D CAD models for downstream documentation. One interesting software tool in the same market space that appears to be really geared toward manufacturing engineering is the planning tool from DISCUS.
An interesting article in Quality Digest describes software tools to help reduce errors in manufacturing… the common thread is managing the technical data package.
Not everyone is familiar with the acronym, CAPP, but the notion of Computer-Aided Process Planning has been around for over twenty years. The focus has been to reduce the labor hours required to create manufacturing planning.
There have been numerous studies and projects to improve the methods for process planning, yet the actual adoption and use of most of these solutions has been very limited. The first approach has involved PLM software vendors creating tools closely-coupled with their proprietary CAD systems. While these are very useful to companies that design and manufacture all their parts in one system, the reality is that most supply chains are distributed and heterogeneous. Thus, most suppliers receive CAD data in many different formats, and they are left to their own devices to create the manufacturing planning for their production system.
The second approach to improve process planning has involved ERP/MES software vendors attempting to “boil the ocean” by creating an all-encompassing system that acts as the one-stop shop. It is based on the concept of a universal database in a large enterprise IT solution with common access for all participants. This approach has merit in a homogeneous enterprise, but it tends to be expensive, ignores the heterogeneous supply chain, and it is typically poor at interacting with the details of the CAD model or drawing.
The third approach has involved software vendors attempting to use artificial intelligence to automate the generation of the manufacturing planning documentation. While these “generative” process planning systems have been used on a very narrow set of parts, their lack of robust expandability makes the approach impractical for the majority of suppliers that make a variety of parts.
Even with all of these efforts, the majority of manufacturing and quality engineers still do not have a standard tool optimized to help quickly create manufacturing planning documentation.
Aberdeen recently published a research report entitled “Jumpstarting Production Planning and Preparation.” This research is timely because it focuses on design for manufacturing and activities related to process planning in the world of the model-based enterprise. A few key extracts from the document:
“The creation of work instructions is another area the Best-in-Class approach concurrently with product development… They facilitate this approach by leveraging existing 3D CAD models to avoid recreating work. This also enables these manufacturers to start sooner by developing
Instructions as the design progresses.”
It was also insightful to discover that design for manufacturing (DFM) is still having a tough time getting a toe-hold in many engineering organizations:
“… despite the popularity of ‘design for manufacturability’ approach to product development, engineering’s inattention to the manufacturability of parts is the third most often reported challenge to manufacturing process planning”
Here is an interesting article that provides the 25 best open source alternatives to enterprise applications (e.g DimDim over Webex, SugarCRM instead of Seibel, Zenoss over HP OpenView). It’s worth taking a look…
In addition, there is a web site called Open Source as Alternative that provides additional comparisons.
I found an interesting whitepaper entitled “5 Secrets for Making the Model-Based Enterprise a Reality“:
Leading aerospace and defense companies are aggressively pursuing the Model-Based Enterprise as a means to accelerate product development… there are enough prominent examples of problems to lead to the conclusion that the vision is not delivering on the promise.
