Menard builds for collaborative production development

Business benefits from so-called manufacturing process management (MPM) software can be immense. In the automotive sector, manufacturing engineers talk openly of considerably shortened time to volume production, optimised shopfloor operations and also reduced design and operating costs. They also allude to product and process quality improvements and right-first-time production – all because of early and near real-time ‘collaboration’ between manufacturing, design, customers, partner organisations and the shop floor. Automotive services giant TWR, now part of Menard Engineering, uses primarily Tecnomatix’s systems throughout its projects – everything from whole vehicle programmes, including manufacture, for the Renault Clio V6 for example, to high performance road car and race vehicle projects, like the Nissan Le Mans team. Head of manufacturing engineering Nick Miller, says the benefits come from several quarters. Indeed, on new products and projects, he says they’re every bit as great as digital technology for product design – the 3D CAD systems, crash simulators, style systems and so on. He estimates that digital tools save Menard around 30% in terms of time to volume production, “by allowing us to identify problems earlier using engineering evaluation tools, like digital mock-up, and allowing information to be kept in a single common area for reuse.” He says, for example, that production systems alone, optimised in the digital environment before committing to physical machines and tools, probably saves “around 10 to 15%”. And process sheets, although not on the critical path, are around 30% faster to create using the technology. Miller reckons MPM also contributes considerably to cutting ultimate process/production line planning and operating costs. “[The system] doesn’t necessarily speed up early planning, but it does allow plans to be simulated, and data created for one purpose to be reused on subsequent projects, both of which save time – and as the library of data increases, that potential for time savings increases.” Using ‘what if’ studies on the model of planned production systems and production operations can be assessed, waste and cost removed and an optimum reached – and then best practice transported from project to project. Miller says: “Simulation also allows different potential situations to be analysed so that flexibility can be built into a process.” And he adds: “During electronic builds, the assembly of a vehicle can be shown to a wide audience in an environment where it is easy to visualise potential issues. These can then be sorted out at the design stage.” For example, when it comes to developing processes around more complex areas of a car, like the front end where there are lots of parts interacting, the system really scores. “It’s difficult looking at CAD models to see how you’re going to interact with the parts in production. With these tools we can see if we need to change the design much earlier, rather than only seeing the problems when we’re in pre-production prototyping.” Miller reckons around 35—45% savings can be achieved form this sort of work. Similarly, when it comes to product and process quality, again there are improvements. Although Menard isn’t using Tecnomatix for this at the moment, he says: “A good example is the use of tolerance analysis. It allows a vehicle structure to be analysed not only at nominal, but with natural production variation to see if complex structures still meet their quality targets. Often, this type of problem would not be found until high volume trials, so it avoids costly, time consuming design changes close the vehicle launch. By using this while the vehicle is still being designed, fundamental changes can be made to the structure with minimal cost.” Beyond these, his system’s automatic tracking and audit trails, while still under development, will also save manufacturing engineering time. “I guess 5% during the life of a vehicle,” says Miller. And he adds: Although we’re not using it for line balancing at the moment, we may well use it for this in the future as well.” Overall, he says it provides a foundation for good internal and external ‘collaboration’ between manufacturing engineers, designers and shop floor personnel. Simulation results can be re-used everywhere – to justify and explain issues to designers, to demonstrate processes visually to production operators. It’s used, for example, to capture and provide access to detailed manufacturing sequences, so that operators working on specials with numerous variants and long cycle times can confirm what they are doing as they come to build. In fact, it also covers capex and manpower resources and operations planning, and costing as well as optimisation. Indeed, the firm uses it to generate the business case and manage the resulting projects too. “It’s not a project management tool, but it allows us to judge how we’re managing the processes – we can access and see how we’re doing with the reporting tools,” says Miller. Menard is currently developing a costing database using the system. “It will making project quoting quicker and easier. We already have an Access database, but there are significant advantage in having it all in Tecnomatix. It has all the manufacturing data in one place, its facilities are better and its our standard engineering environment now.” In fact, the firm has got it down to a fine art, with templates for generic processes like ‘doors off’, ‘harness routes’ and so on – and these can be cut and pasted into any of its projects. “It means we have generic lists of processes for standard cars, convertibles that have extra processes and so on. We can use those to quote very accurately and then if we get the project, they’re the starting point, so it saves huge amounts of time. Recently, we set up a final assembly draft in just three days – something that would have taken three or four weeks in the past,” he says. This is the way to go – and certainly not jut in the automotive industry. Miller makes it clear that for TRW, the system’s provision of a common engineering database, and the potential for information and methodology re-use for improving engineering, production and manufacturing management, are key to its success.