Page 30 - MetalForming Magazine March 2022

Effective Teamwork Via ERP
Design-to-manufacturing facilitates collaboration across metal forming and fabricating organizations and supply chains to improve resiliency, performance and efficiency.
BY LOUIS COLUMBUS
Metal formers and fabricators today, facing the highest steel and aluminum prices in years, also contend with supply short- ages, chronic labor shortfalls and unpredictable demand spikes. How- ever, top-performing manufacturers in this sector maintain success by shoring up their business continuity— doubling down on improving collab- oration from their shop floors to supply chains and everywhere in between. Increasingly, the application of design- to-manufacturing across engineering,
Louis Columbus is principal of Delmia- Works, www.solidworks.com/delmia- works-manufacturing-erp, a provider of technology and expertise for enter- prise resource planning, and formerly known as IQMS until its recent acqui- sition by Dassault Systems.
production, quality, sales and other key business operations fuel this col- laboration.
Case in point: A decades-old metal fabricator employs design-to-manu- facturing to serve some 750 customers in North America and Europe. The com- pany’s COO observes that once the computer-aided design (CAD), manu- facturing scheduling, production plan- ning, quality and sales teams all "spoke the same language and knew what the other teams were talking about," quote- turnaround times dropped by 35 per- cent. The same manufacturer reports an increase in design-to-delivery cycles by at least 20 percent, and a drop in cost overruns by 50 percent.
Let’s examine how design-to-manu- facturing facilitates collaboration across metal forming and fabricating organi- zations and supply chains to improve resiliency, performance and efficiency.
Collaboration: Design-to- Manufacturing Rocket Fuel
It helps to start with an overview of how metal formers and fabricators, particularly discrete batch manufac- turers, leverage design-to-manufactur- ing. For years, these companies have used design-for-manufacturing to streamline their CAD-based quoting processes. One manufacturer calls this shorter, quick-turnaround phase a mini-design-to-manufacturing work- flow because it includes only the most essential steps to complete a CAD file
and turn it into a quote.
Next, metal formers provide cus-
tomers with the CAD models and a checklist of comments and recommen- dations regarding part-design con- cerns, tooling requirements and how product-design constraints must be managed. With the project awarded to the manufacturer, the customer creates a purchase order and the broader design-to-manufacturing process begins, which incorporates engineer- ing, manufacturing, quality and sales.
The Serial vs. Concurrent Design- to-Manufacturing graphic illustrates two versions of how metal formers and fabricators apply the full design-to- manufacturing process today: the typ- ical serial approach, and the concurrent approach—enabled when supporting applications are integrated and share the same data. The ability to simulta- neously complete key operations allows metal formers to reach production faster, saving time and money.
By employing full, concurrent design-to-manufacturing, manufac- turers can cut quote turnaround times while improving design-to-delivery cycles and reducing cost overruns, as each team uses less time verifying data and making fewer errors before initi- ating the product build. For example, CAD designers know before they rec- ommend a custom-part material if pro- duction can build it at scale. Mean- while, when the CAD drawing is translated into a bill of materials and
28 MetalForming/March 2022
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