Many still think that a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system is only for the Engineering department. At one point that may have been true. However, I am starting to see a shift in that mind set. More companies every day are starting to see the benefit, and even the necessity, in giving manufacturing direct access to the appropriate engineering data through a robust PLM system.
In this two part series I am going to outline a fictional use case both with and without PLM. My intent is for this to highlight the benefit of PLM in manufacturing. Please realize the use cases are not all inclusive. There are many possible actions that need to be taken to start manufacturing of a new product. I am simplifying for purpose of maintaining a storyline that is easier to follow along.
In the first use case, engineering is working in a PLM system and Manufacturing is not. Engineering uses PLM for data management, process management, and controls their release process utilizing this system. However, only engineering has access to this PLM system.
When a new product is released to manufacturing, only the drawings associated to this product are printed on paper and put in a folder and then physically handed to manufacturing. Once manufacturing has this folder, they begin the required tasks to begin production of this product. I will outline below what a possible workflow might look like in manufacturing without a PLM system.
Part 1: Initial Manufacturing Product Release Tasks
The required parts are manually entered into the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. In many cases, the parts are entered into a manufacturing Excel file instead. Requests made to purchasing to procure parts and raw materials required, utilizing copies of the 2D prints to send to the suppliers. After that, a Bill of Materials (BoM) structure for the parts is manually created to support the required manufacturing processes.
Part 2: Process Planning
Manufacturing will then begin the layout of processes required to manufacture the product. In many cases, the layouts are also created in Excel.
Part 3: Tooling and Controls Design
The tooling designers recreate the required 3D models from the 2D prints. The designs are typically saved in an uncontrolled manner such as on a local drive on a user desktop. The machining paths and other controlling programs are generated from these uncontrolled tooling files as well.
Part 4: In Process Engineering Change
While the ramp up is happening, engineering has the ability to make last-minute changes. If a change is made, a new 2D print must be created and supplied to manufacturing. Manufacturing must attempt to replace all copies of the printed design with a new copy. When this happens, there is great risk associated with having two of these copies floating around. Designers are manually notified to make the required changes, as are the supplies to make the required changes to the new prints. Manufacturing planning must adjust processes based on these changes as well.
Part 5: Finish Ramp Up
Manufacturing ramp up continues leading into the initial manufacturing process.
Part 6: Begin Initial Manufacturing Run
During the initial manufacturing process, a manufacturing team member notices there is a clearance issue with the design. The manufacturing team member verbally notifies their cell leader of this issue. The cell leader will then make a phone call to the engineer whose name is on the print and explains the problem. The engineer tells him to grind down the part to allow the needed clearance. The cell lead marks by hand on the print how much the part must be grinded down. If the engineer remembers, he will also update the 3D design to match this. It’s unlikely they would request a formal change to be release. One thing to note here is that there is no history of this interaction anywhere but on the market up print on the manufacturing floor.
This happens many times during the initial manufacturing process. Typically, only major issues are formally documented which will drive a full change process in Engineering.
Part 7: Out-of-date Information on Manufacturing Floor
One sub-assembly was made using out-of-date information due to outdated prints being used. Rebuild of this sub-assembly was required.
Part 8: Product Release
The final product is released to the customer.
Most of the as-built documentation is saved on paper in a folder in the manufacturing offices.
One year later, they need to do a manufacturing run on this same product. However, they have a large turnover with their manufacturing employees. Only a few people are there that worked on the first production run of this product. They were not aware of the as-built mark-ups manufacturing had in their folders. So, many of the same issues were found and had to be corrected in this manufacturing run again.
I listed a few possible issues that could come from uncontrolled information used in manufacturing. I am sure you can imagine, or even experienced other possible issues.
Keep your eyes peeled for next weeks post where I review the same manufacturing process, but this time with manufacturing having direct access to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). If you would like to learn more about the benefits of PLM in manufacturing you can download our eBook, “Designing an Effective Change Control Process” here. This eBook discusses how following a change control process would likely improve productivity and reduce quality issues. The benefits of having a controlled process in place substantially outweigh the initial time and resources to get started.
While I’d like to think I’m a good storyteller and an artist, I’m pretty sure I’m not ‘awesome’ at either. That’s one more reason to pay attention to Augmented Reality (AR) these days.
As an engineer and a designer, I frequently find myself trying to explain a widget, a feature, or a design to someone. Often this takes lots of hand-waving, white-board markers, and innumerable sketches. This got better over time with improved drawing skills and communication techniques. It was even better still when I could put a physical model in someone’s hands by using a 3D printer for rapid prototyping. Well, things just got a lot more interesting when we started using AR through ThingWorx Studio to do virtual prototyping.
While I spend most of my time designing business strategies for the IoT and connecting products using ThingWorx as an IoT platform, the AR portion of ThingWorx is simply fun to use. One great way to employ the tool is to super-impose streaming data and information directly onto the product while looking through a mobile device. AR Prototyping, on the other hand, is the ability to superimpose alternate designs into the real world through a mobile device such that you can experience a design as it was intended. The kicker is that you can whip together a couple dozen designs, review them virtually — in person or remotely — and have a fabulous understanding of the design in less time than it takes to print even one prototype.
In the video below we’re playing with the app ThingWorx View by PTC. Watch this model of a motorcycle come to life with Augmented Reality (AR). We’ve used this technology for virtual prototyping. For some of our customers we are able to swap in and out CAD models to virtually prototype new designs and configurations.
So, if you’re like me and you want to convey a design idea in a hurry — even faster than a rapid prototype — you should really look into AR Prototyping. This has sliced-bread beat no problem.
If you want to start virtual prototyping, ask us how here! We’d love to help you transform the way you design and connect to your products.
Does the phrase “Formal Change Control” lead to scary thoughts like “We don’t have the time to set that up,” or “We don’t know how to do it or where to start?” If this sounds like you, likely your organization is spending more time dealing with the downstream and long term repeated issues than if they took the time to outline a change control process.
While every company will vary, there are three basic phases of creating a formal change control process. Find out how to implement a formal change control process in these three phases.
- Issue or Problem Reporting
- Change Request or Approval Process
- Change Notice or Execution
Phase 1: Reporting & Logging Issues
- Provide an efficient way for anyone in the organization to report and log issues.
- Store issues in an Issue Queue that will resolved it in one of three ways:
- Take no action
- Put the issue on hold
- Request a formal change
Phase 2: Formal Change Request
- The Formal Change Request is the second stage of review that can be handled in one of three ways:
- Rejection
- Request more information
- Approved for further action, either fast track or Full Formal Change
- If the change is approved for further action, it typically is reviewed by a board that will do one of the following:
- Reject the change request
- Proceed to the change notice
Phase 3: The Change Notice
- At this point the change request can no longer be rejected, it must be addressed and acted upon.
- This phase can be defined as Static or Dynamic:
- If it is a Static process, the same departments and teams will be notified and responsible for executing the change
- If it is a Dynamic, a new process is developed specifically for each change
- When the plan is fully defined, typically a change implementation board review occurs.
Formal Change Control processes are simple, the added control of these processes alone could save your organization money in the long run. The possibility of increased productivity and reduced quality issues will far outweigh the initial time and resources required to get a change control process implemented.
We like to keep it simple, not scary here at EAC. For a full overview of how to design an effective change control process, download our eBook, Designing an Effective Change Control Process.
EAC Product Development Solutions (EAC), a leading provider of product development technology and services, is pleased to announce a partnership with Formlabs. This partnership allows EAC to bring professional quality SLA 3D printers and materials to commercial product development and education customers.
Burnsville, MN – May 5, 2016 — EAC Product Development Solutions (EAC) brings desktop SLA 3D printing to commercial customers through strategic partnership with Formlabs.
EAC has signed a partnership agreement to become a North American Channel Reseller for Formlabs. They will offer commercial, discrete manufacturing, and education customers the full line of Formlabs products. This partnership addresses increasing market demand for accessible additive manufacturing and rapid prototyping solutions. The Form 2 3D Printer will allow EAC’s customers to insert high-quality stereolithography (SLA) prototyping into their engineering and design workflows, for a fraction of the cost of competing technologies. The ability to minimize turnaround times by keeping prototyping in house is critical. Especially today, when development costs are scrutinized and time-to-market is more important than ever.
“We use the Form 2 to bring additional value to our engineering services engagements. I’m excited to bring the technology directly to our customers and look forward to sharing the knowledge we’ve acquired. These printers should be on the desk of every engineer. They have the potential to dramatically shorten design cycles and increase innovation. It’s amazing what happens when you enable an engineer to get their hands on a design idea.” — Allen Caldwell, senior mechanical engineer at EAC Product Development Solutions
Thane Hathaway, President and CEO of EAC said: “I built this company with a mission; to transform the way companies design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products. Additive Manufacturing, or 3D Printing, is a transformative technology that’s changing the way organizations approach product development. The Formlabs printers and materials offer professional quality 3D printing at an incredible price point. I look forward to this partnership and helping our education and commercial customers embrace this technology.”
“With decades of experience, EAC pairs deep product development expertise with a strong background in technical design. This distinct expertise will accelerate Formlabs’ efforts in bringing accessible, powerful desktop 3D printing to the millions of professional engineers and designers worldwide.” – Luke Winston, head of sales and customer success at Formlabs.
About EAC:
EAC Product Development Solutions transforms the way companies design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products. For more than 20 years they have provided the services and technologies needed to innovate, optimize, and win in the complex and competitive world of product development.
About Formlabs:
Formlabs designs and manufactures powerful and accessible 3D printing systems for engineers, designers, and artists. Their flagship product, the Form 2 3D Printer, uses stereolithography (SLA) to create high-resolution physical objects from digital designs. The company was founded in 2012 by a team of engineers and designers from the MIT Media Lab and Center for Bits and Atoms. With its powerful, intuitive, and affordable machines, Formlabs is establishing a new benchmark in professional desktop 3D printing. Formlabs also develops its own suite of high-performance materials for 3D printing, as well as best-in-class 3D-printing software.
A spring, a trigger, and a board — the gold standard for catching mice. So much so, that ‘building a better mousetrap’ has become a colloquialism for futility. I’d like to challenge the notion that we can’t improve the value of a mature/fully-vetted product. Maybe it isn’t something we can achieve by redesigning the core product. But, what about transforming it? Shifting value and enhancing what the product is through connectivity and the Internet of Things (IoT). Think about it. What if the classic mousetrap sent trap status alerts and thereby gave you peace of mind. Or better still, that your strategically placed trap has done its job and needs to be emptied and reset.
The 5-Layers of an IoT Connected Thing:
To start our grand journey to the engineer’s happy place, let’s run with the mousetrap example and explore the 5 layers it takes to connect any ‘thing’ to the IoT.
Layer 1 — Core Product Infrastructure
As with any product initiative, it’s important to start with a solid core product infrastructure. The standard mousetrap is both solid and elegant (and lethal) – a board, a spring and a trigger. The physical product has to function…well. But we’re adding value by awareness, so let’s build onto the first layer with a sensor circuit.
Layer 2 — A Sensor Circuit
This is where we consider what data could support analysis to determine the status of our trap. Lots of options exist – accelerometers, a switch, a photo resistor, a force-sensitive resistor, or even an ultrasonic transducer come to mind. Selecting one (or more) depends on other layers and the approach to analytic logic. Always select your sensors with end goal in mind. While it might be fun to integrate a laser of some sort, we’ll keep it simple – a micro switch with a circuit that is held closed by an ‘armed’ trap.
The next two layers help us deal with the data coming from our micro switch circuit connected to a microcontroller.
Layer 3 — Connectivity
The connectivity layer requires cost/function/environmental tradeoffs. Options run the gamut from radio to Ethernet to Wi-Fi, to Long Range vhf/uhf radio and even cellular – each with benefits and challenges. For simplicity and example sake, we’ll consider a Bluetooth connection to a home computer. It’s likely a good solution given range and pervasive connectivity.
Layer 4 — Analytics
The connectivity layer flows into the analytics layer and approach – how, where and when we determine a ‘sprung’ trap. Once it’s determined and we process any other salient information, we would likely pass that info through our connectivity layer to our Smart Application in the IoT Platform layer at the top of our IoT stack.
3 Realms of Performing IoT Analytics
Before we get carried away, however, let’s unpack 3 realms of performing analytics; Real-time, Local and Cloud.
- Real-time analysis would typically be high-frequency evaluation of a trigger or a calculation based on multiple values to determine some sort of event before storing or pushing data to the cloud. For example, this ‘live’ processing could evaluate accelerometer data to determine if someone took a step in the case of a wearable IoT device. In the case of our trap, it could be used to ‘wake up’ the monitoring system once a mouse is sensed sniffing the trap.
- Local Storage of data before going to the cloud provides for some short-term hysteresis, filtering or perhaps comparison to a time-based goal as in number of steps in a day — or mice sniffing our trap.
- Cloud — Real-time and local storage data can be streamed to the cloud for long-term storage, trending, historical analysis and such. It could even be used to feed a machine-learning algorithm for predictive failure analyses.
For our simple mousetrap example, we’d likely just monitor the micro-switch at some reasonable interval and send the status to our IoT Platform – likely ThingWorx.
Layer 5 — IoT Platform
So now that our newly enhanced trap can sense, connect, analyze, and communicate its status, we can share that with an IoT platform to aggregate data and either perform additional analytics or communicate with other traps, sensors, or systems. This is where the IoT can really take off by being the refinery of crude data from various streams and start to head for a connected stream of autonomous systems of systems – but I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll address that in a future blog on IoT platforms.
Applications communicating autonomously on a defined platform are what facilitate this shift of product value. This is why a powerful, scalable and secure platform for application development is just as important a layer as the rest. It’s here that we can actually see the newfound value of our connected mousetrap – Is it still armed? – Was it tripped? Do I need to check on it? With enough sensors, good analytics, and a flexible platform, we could ascertain which of many traps has had an event, if it’s full, or just been ‘sniffed.’ When an event happens an email or text can be sent to someone with the delightful responsibility to do something about it!
And so that’s how we can make a better mousetrap, tractor, valve, medical device, etc. A “better mousetrap” is a simple example, but if we can add value to the mousetrap just imagine how you could add value to your products. Each of the 5 layers of the IoT stack plays a role — core product infrastructure, sensor systems, connectivity, analytics, and smart applications on an IoT platform.
If you’d like to build your better mousetrap, or more likely, if you’d like to transform the way you design, manufacture, connect to, or service your products, EAC would love to help. Let’s connect.
Product development can be time consuming, difficult to manage, and slow to get up and running. Luckily, EAC Engineering Services is here to help transform the way you design your products. We offer a number of services to help you reduce time-to-market and improve project management to complete more projects. We can help with everything from customized mentoring to acting as your entire engineering team.
Milestone AV Technologies was in a position in which engineering resources were being fully utilized on active projects but they needed to make progress on a project that had been prototyped but stalled for nearly a year. Their solution? Find a trusted partner to deliver a thorough and mature design.
Milestone AV Technologies selected EAC as their trusted partner to deliver engineering and design services as well as manage the project.
Mike Ardito, Director of Product Development at Milestone AV Technologies said that in the little amount of time EAC Design Engineers worked on the project, they advanced it significantly. The level of maturity in the design exceeded his expectations.
“The first thing that was really evident when we started [working together] was that [EAC’s Design Engineer] was being very diligent from an engineering standpoint. We set up weekly meetings to check in, to give guidance, see what he was doing, and answer questions. It was clear that he was doing a lot of upfront work that would inform the design later. The engineering rigor and the quality of engineering work and the technical work, I got the impression was very good and the diligence was very high.”
Milestone needed to maintain critical client relationships by completing the project on-time and within budget. Leveraging the partnership with EAC allowed them to do exactly that. The project was completed on-time and within 10% of budget.
Like many companies, Milestone prefers to keep project work internal. However, if the opportunity presented itself, Ardito said he would have no issues coming back to EAC to based on his first experience with EAC.
Ardito explained that they look to outside design firms because they don’t have the internal resources available to manage the project but still want to move forward with it. He said “the worst possible case would be to go to somebody to do the external work and then have to spend a lot on internal resources managing that work.” He also explained that working with EAC, he was comfortable because he knew the project was in good hands and he would receive a quality output.
It was the first time Milestone AV Technologies reached out to another design firm in over a year. Ardito said, “The most valuable part of partnering with EAC goes back to having faith very early on that the technical rigor and detail was being addressed. I was assured that the EAC team was going to do the diligence necessary to create a good design.”
Milestone AV Technologies was able to complete a critical project 40% (8 months) faster by leveraging EAC’s Engineering Services group. Ardito explained that realistically, due to their workload they wouldn’t have been able to work on this project until the first quarter of 2016; EAC was able to deliver this project to them in October of 2015.
Ardito’s final comment was, “The level of service [EAC] provided, in terms of being available, the amount of attention EAC gave to the project before, during, and after was very good. It wasn’t the kind of thing where ‘we won this contract so we’re going to slap it out and not really follow up and make sure the customer is happy.’ It was just the right way to do business.”
