Getting it all together

Every day in the design office we’re bombarded with new acronyms from the IT world: PLM (product lifecycle management), CPC (collaborative product commerce) and PDM (product data management) to name but a few. But perhaps the only acronym we’re all really comfortable explaining is CAD since most of us have either worked directly with such a system or have at least seen one in action from over someone else’s shoulder. But the first three acronyms all mean pretty much the same thing. They’re all commonly referred to as ‘collaborative product development’, which really means that anyone in an enterprise (or remote site) from the design engineer right through to industrial designers, manufacturing engineers and marketing personnel can all become involved, and have access to, product design information through all stages of a product’s lifecycle. And the benefits of working closely together like this are numerous. First, it encourages other departments in an enterprise to communicate and challenge the product design in the early stages of development. Marketing for instance may feel that the design is too bulky for their target market. The manufacturing team may feel that the product would be more cost effective to make if some parts of the product were made from plastic rather than aluminium materials. The positive effect on a company’s bottom line should not be underestimated here. As much as 80% of a product’s cost can be attributed to decisions made at the development and design stage, so it needs to be right. But while we know many businesses have invested in 2D and 3D CAD software, are these firms actually implementing PDM systems to help manage it all? Nick Ballard of UK industry analyst firm Cambashi explains that, “Whilst many large organisations have spent millions on PDM projects, most companies in the UK haven’t even adopted a PDM system at all yet, never mind working collaboratively together across the Internet. Companies are still buying point solutions, and are confused as to what the vendors are actually offering them.” So why should manufacturing firms integrate their CAD systems with a PDM system? Well, PDM itself first arose because engineers needed a technological method of managing and handling their CAD data. And PDM software is also supposed to ensure that bills of material (BOMs) are generated on the design side, rather than companies having multiple different BOM versions – having one version for manufacturing and another for design is a common problem for many firms. The BOM should describe exactly what parts will be used in each manufactured product, and it therefore needs to be complete and accurate because it’s the source document relied on by many parts of a business: purchasing, stock control and manufacturing. The argument is, if you successfully integrate the two systems, the benefits to the business are immediate. First, it enables true concurrent engineering through the company (or between remote sites), reducing time to market for new products, cutting product lifecycle costs and ensuring integrity of product data at all times. It’s also useful in other ways, like managing work in progress, providing a common system for change control, legal vaulting and archiving of completed projects. The list goes on. So what’s stopping us? UK consultancy firm Solass specialises in providing advice to small and mid-size manufacturing companies, specialising in enterprise-wide PDM projects. Tony Jessop, one of the founders of the business, has been involved in many PDM implementations: “It’s not the size of the company that’s holding back many CAD-PDM integration projects; it’s the complexity of the design itself. Reflecting this complexity at the PDM level, which can mean thousands of different components and sub-assemblies, can be very difficult to achieve.” Focus on processes But Jessop warns manufacturers to be wary of being sold systems that are not true enterprise-wide PDM products. “Some vendors out there are ‘tarting up’ their software and calling it PDM, when it’s really just a CAD management program for designers. There’s no true collaboration going on with manufacturing engineers downstream which is one of the really important benefits of true PDM.” According to Jessop, companies need to focus on understanding business processes and getting the flow of product information to downstream processes quickly. Another consultant with plenty of experience integrating PDM and CAD systems (mainly for UK aerospace and automotive companies) is Andrew Waters, PDM consultant at EDM Consultancy. “There are a couple of things that normally hold up this type of integration work,” he says. “The first is all about product structure and the BOM. You need a skilled team of individuals who have experience in this whole area of configuration management. Don’t just give the product structure responsibility to designers, otherwise you’ll run into problems. “The second area is to do with change management. You need to make sure you enforce discipline with design teams. Ensure they don’t do any work unless it’s been authorised by a change note through the PDM system.” One manufacturing company that has managed to overcome the difficulties of integrating its CAD systems with a PDM system, and is now reaping the rewards of this effort, is Bristol-based engineering and project management firm, Strachan & Henshaw. The company designs and manufactures mechanical handling systems for the defence and nuclear industries. There are 700 employees in all, about 120 in manufacturing. The systems developed by the business range from those that handle fuel rods inside nuclear reactors to those for loading and launching torpedoes from submarines. The company has been using a number of different CAD systems. Two years ago, it was using AutoCAD for most of its 2D design work, plus CoCreate’s suite, including ME10, SolidDesigner and WorkManager (PDM) software. But before any analysis or testing could be carried out on the design, the 2D drawing had to be passed on to somebody else in the firm who would then translate this into a 3D model. Then the required analysis (including finite element analysis (FEA) and Seismic testing) could be done. “The problem with this approach was the time it was taking to complete the necessary design and analysis work. And we usually had to build three to four different 3D models from scratch which was costly to the business,” explains Andrew Mitchell, technical systems and process improvement leader at Strachan & Henshaw. Concurrent pressures At the same time there was mounting pressure on the business to deliver projects and products to customers faster, so a concurrent engineering approach to product development and manufacturing was thought to be the best way forward. So software was required to support and drive this. Therefore, in 2000, the company evaluated a number of different CAD/CAM and PDM vendors including PTC, IBM Catia and UGS. “We got down to two vendors in the end,” says Mitchell. “UGS and PTC. And to be honest, there wasn’t a lot in it. I would have gone with either system at that point, but one thing swung it in favour of UGS, and that was how well its PDM product [iMAN] integrated with the CAD/CAM package [Unigraphics]. This was a very important factor for us.” Before fully committing to UGS’ software suite though, the company decided to test it in a pilot project. Mitchell, who was responsible for the pilot and subsequently the roll out to the rest of the company, explains: “The project selected for the pilot was an existing one for the development of a new weapons system for the Astute Class submarine. With the assistance of UGS’ technical support staff, we successfully replaced the existing CAD systems on the project [AutoCAD and SolidDesigner] with Unigraphics and implemented the i-Man product data management system – without causing any delay to the project. Throughout the course of the pilot we were particularly impressed by the professionalism of UGS’ technical support staff. “Another important factor was that i-Man will form the backbone of our new collaborative product development environment. The fact that it’s proven and has an impressive list of successful, working installations around the world already was very reassuring.” Proven pilot project The pilot started at the end of July 2000 and finished eight months later in April this year. “The pilot didn’t overrun at all: eight months was what we expected,” says Mitchell. “The project proved to us that UGS software could handle our complete order book, so we decided to roll out the software immediately to the rest of the business.” The company spent £800,000 in total on software and consultancy. There are now 30 seats of Unigraphics CAD/CAM/CAE software, 85 seats of i-Man PDM, 21 seats of SolidEdge for 3D modelling and about 20 seats of ProductVision, UGS’ visualisation and web collaboration software. SolidEdge is now being used mainly for initial concept design work as well as for smaller development projects. Unigraphics is being used on larger, more complex projects and for detailed engineering design, including integrated structural integrity and assembly motion analysis and numerical control manufacturing. And all information relating to individual projects, including 3D component models, assembly models, detailed drawings, product configuration details, analysis results, specifications and manufacturing process information is all being managed by i-Man. “We’re using i-Man to control individual access to the product database and to manage engineering work flows, revision levels and design sign-off procedures,” explains Mitchell. And UGS’ ProductVision visualisation tool is being used to good effect too. As Mitchell describes: “It’s enabling real time design collaboration between dispersed project teams, including non-technical staff who need to give input to the development process or to sign off designs.” The company is initially only using ProductVision across its secure internal network via standard web browsers, but does plan to make the same facilities available to customers, suppliers and partners in the next couple of years. So what about the business benefits? According to Mitchell the improvements are already surfacing: “We’ve seen massive improvements in the time it takes to create detailed designs – on average, between 30% and 50% reductions. “And on the analytics side we’re seeing benefits from UGS’ software. We now have one master model that everyone has access to. They can perform the required Seismic analysis or FEA work. Everything’s much slicker now and the work flow has improved dramatically. We can now search and find the right information quickly and with total confidence.” Mitchell also mentions the firm’s future plans to integrate i-Man with its existing enterprise (ERP) system. “The ultimate aim is for the company to be in a position to pass the final BOM from i-Man straight through to the ERP system, and to this end UGS fulfilled all our criteria.” Finally a word of warning from Mitchell for companies planning to embark on similar enterprise-wide CAD and PDM integration projects: “Don’t underestimate the amount of internal resource you’ll need, firstly to implement the software and then to train your staff in how to use it effectively. Also, make sure you know and understand your project requirements.”