Page 31 - MetalForming Magazine March 2022

work instructions, production planners already know whether a custom tool is needed, and if the existing machinery can produce high-quality products based on the original design.
The collaboration enabled by design-to-manufacturing becomes rocket fuel for defining, designing and delivering custom products. All teams now know what's expected of them, can see the product data in their unique languages and know exactly what they must do to deliver excellent products. Moreover, metal formers can remove roadblocks that, otherwise,
would have stopped a design. All of this becomes possible because everyone communicates in real time on the same integrated manufacturing platform.
Putting Design-to- Manufacturing to Work
From talking with a number of metal formers and fabricators, it’s possible to create a composite profile of how a typical manufacturer can apply design- to-manufacturing best practices to improve collaboration and achieve bet- ter outcomes—even with the most complex customer orders.
Sales and engineering can share knowledge and collaborate more close- ly on quotes, leveraging 3D models for each one to determine capable-to- promise more accurately, determine other key delivery dates and gather all of the design data needed for cus- tomers to make decisions. With sales and engineering collaborating in real time, metal formers and fabricators can achieve a 40-percent-plus reduc- tion in quote errors and a 70-percent gain in quote turnarounds. Notably, the systems supporting both teams are
programmed to make basic quoting decisions on their own, further automating the process.
Engineering and quality teams can collaborate on simulations of a part using a new material/alloy to test for performance and manufacturing via- bility in real time. For example, a metal fabricator discovers that providing sim- ulations helps alleviate potential pro- duction problems early on, enabling management of customer expectations better than any after-the-fact report could. Applying that lesson to produc- tion shaves hours from the final veri- fication process. Now, the metal fab- ricator can modify the tooling and then re-run simulations to determine if the part is fit for manufacture.
The engineering team then can check the supply chain and inventory via the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to ensure that the new raw material/alloy is available before running first-article inspections. Design-to-manufacturing enables every member of the cross-functional product team to know immediately if their contributions to the product
Serial vs. Concurrent Design-to-Manufacturing
TYPICAL SERIAL DESIGN-TO-MANUFACTURING PROCESS
CONCEPT MECHANICAL ELECTRICAL MFG
& SCHEMATICS DESIGN DESIGN DRAWNGS
PRODUCTION
CONCURRENT AND INTEGRATED DESIGN-TO-MANUFACTURING PROCESS
Aided by the real-time data-sharing capability of an ERP system, an engineer prepares packing-slip labels for simple and error-proof shipping.
CAM, TOOLS, TECH DOCS & INSPECTION
DISTRIBUTED DATA MANAGEMENT
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