Making the value of technology clear
[post_title] => Supply Chain Resiliency: Taking the Road Less Traveled
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[post_date] => 2023-05-31 09:00:30
[post_date_gmt] => 2023-05-31 13:00:30
[post_content] => 
How can manufacturers improve manufacturing engineering? We surveyed 177 people directly involved with manufacturing engineering and found that modernizing processes and technology drives higher manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. These improvements are crucial to profitability in the industrial equipment industry as customers demand high quality, more personalized products at increasingly faster time to market; all despite rising product and manufacturing complexity.
Survey results show that Top Performers waste less time on non-value-added activities, find issues sooner, and spend less on physical prototypes. They accomplish this through best practices, including more advanced collaboration and communication methods and increased use of 3D and simulation, to plan and validate manufacturing operations with digital twins.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes DELMIA (registration required).
This eBook shares additional data analysis and insights for the industrial equipment industry from our Transforming Manufacturing Engineering with Virtual Build research. Watch this three-part on-demand webinar series with Jim Brown to learn how manufacturers can improve manufacturing engineering and technology.
Manufacturing is more complex than ever. Complexity has increased in three areas; products, manufacturing processes, and markets. Today’s products are offered with increasing numbers of variants and configuration options and require a combination of mechanical, electrical, and software components. Today’s production may include industrial additive manufacturing capabilities, and involves increased automation. In addition, increasing demand for automation and new power sources including electric, hydrogen, and solar are accelerating the rate of change in the industrial equipment industry. Finally, manufacturers are shifting production and reshoring as the industry is trying to cope with supply chain issues. Despite these, manufacturing engineers need to decrease cycle times and improve quality.
Challenges Reflect Lack of Ability to Visualize, Data Challenges
Manufacturing engineers must overcome significant challenges to design and validate production processes. The most commonly reported challenge is the inability to visualize assembly processes. This makes it challenging for planners to optimize process plans and provide feedback on manufacturability. The inability to experience production virtually leads to the need for time-consuming, costly physical mockups.
They also report challenges with obtaining accurate, timely product design data which limits the ability for manufacturing engineers to work in parallel to shorten time to market. Finally, respondents report challenges with the time required to build prototypes, their ability to capture knowledge for reuse, and optimizing complex processes.
Too Much Wasted Time
Survey respondents identified manufacturing engineering inefficiency as both a challenge and profitability requirement. Researchers further inquired about the amount of manufacturing engineering time that participants estimate their companies spend on non-value-added activities, including:
[post_title] => Canvas Envision Takes Work Instructions to New Levels of Ease (Insight)
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[post_modified] => 2023-05-13 14:17:32
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[post_date] => 2023-05-10 13:42:30
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[post_content] => We’ve been talking about operationalizing innovation for some time. It’s a crucial need because, as our research shows, innovation for products and services is among the top factors driving long-term business success. It can’t be left to organic inspiration or luck. It must be targeted and driven to provide a repeatable, scalable market advantage that drives profitable growth.
But what does it take to operationalize innovation? After a recent call with Sopheon, I’m happy to see there is effort being put into this question. Sopheon is supporting an initiative to define and support “InnovationOps” to serve the same role as DevOps, SecurityOps, or other approaches to take innovation to the next level. Unlike most software companies, they aren’t taking a “not invented here” approach. Instead, they are pulling together leaders in innovation practice and theory to help further the concept.
I suspect they will use what they learn to help drive their product strategy, which as I’ve written previously, has been extended to cover a broader set of processes than their traditional portfolio management solution alone. It’s a win-win, and an exciting idea that should provide a strong framework for companies to improve innovation value, speed, and efficiency.
Thank you Greg Coticchia, Mike Bauer, and Paul Heller for sharing the concept with me and inviting me to participate in the roundtables.
[post_title] => Sopheon Champions new InnovationOps Movement
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[post_date] => 2023-05-02 09:53:38
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[post_content] => Jim Brown and I are jazzed up after learning about how Elisa IndustrIQ is combining the data management and analytics of the parent telco to strengthen already successful manufacturing applications. This combination of data structures, analytics algorithms for AI and ML, and applications that serve specific industries’ needs can deliver very high value. Elisa IndustrIQ is making its modular solution available in a way that also leverages data from outside the suite to make it even more valuable and broadly applicable.
A true digital transformation changes or extends the business model, and Finnish telco Elisa has done just that. It recognized that its analytics and automation to run the telco could apply to optimizing manufacturing. They also realized that embedding this into applications that solve real business issues would boost the customer’s value. So, for the past few years, it has been building and acquiring manufacturing applications to address manufacturing challenges, including production speed, connected supply chain, skilled workforce, climate change, and cybersecurity.
Their research showed that increased agility in production would be paramount to manufacturers’ success. Acquisitions have fueled the depth of the company’s applications and geographic spread of manufacturing-savvy people and customers:
[post_title] => Elisa IndustrIQ Combines Advanced Analytics into Established Applications (Insight)
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[post_modified] => 2023-05-06 09:55:01
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[post_date] => 2023-04-28 09:00:07
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[post_content] => It’s exciting when you see a company reinvent themselves to take on an important, unsolved problem in the industry. That’s exactly what Actify has done. We’ve been following them from the time of their early, very successful CAD viewer product line SpinFire through their new evolution to create a holistic solution for automotive project management. What they’ve done opens up a new era of solutions for program managers working for automotive suppliers, and likely for other industries to follow.
I can hear people saying “there are already lots of project management tools on the market.” True. There are also lots of PLM solutions to manage data, cloud storage solutions to manage files, and collaboration solutions to manage…well…collaboration. But automotive program management needs all of those things, and all but the biggest companies have trouble implementing and integrating all of those capabilities. What Actify has done is build a solution that is tailor-made for program managers. It not only manages documents and collaboration - it manages these in the context of an automotive program. During the demonstration, we noted how the tasks maintain the context of the program, for example a DFMEA, so managing the schedule and the work to be done are joined in one place to avoid the need for program managers to manually connect status, schedules, and work objects.
Top tier automotive suppliers live and die by their OEM relationships and the profitability of their programs. To support this, program management has evolved as a unique and critical discipline. Actify has even coined a new phrase, “Make to Program,” that reflects the unique manufacturing style and processes they support in the automotive supply chain. It’s nice to see someone developing tools that are built to work specifically for them. Especially at a time with so many new programs and the dramatic change as the automotive industry electrifies.
Thank you Peter West, Bob Anson, and Charisse Dalton for spending time and sharing the progress toward your vision with me, Julie, and Michelle.
[post_title] => Actify Offers Program Management Solution for Automotive Suppliers (insight)
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[post_date] => 2023-04-26 08:00:49
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[post_content] => How can life sciences manufacturers accelerate their innovation? One way is by recognizing and creating an operational digital twin that’s connected to MES. We will discuss:
For related research, read our Accelerate Life Sciences Innovation with Operations Digital Twin eBook.
[post_title] => Accelerate Manufacturing and Time to Market in Life Sciences
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[post_modified] => 2024-01-02 12:01:02
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[ID] => 18187
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[post_date] => 2023-04-25 10:00:25
[post_date_gmt] => 2023-04-25 14:00:25
[post_content] => 
Current economic conditions make service profitability and asset longevity more important than ever. How can service organizations leverage the IoT to transform service and improve service performance and profitability? This Buyer’s Guide offers seven ways that can help companies get started or expand on early efforts, apply lessons learned from initial projects, and drive repeatable value that they can grow over time.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full buyer’s guide please visit our sponsor, PTC (registration required).
For related research, view our Improve Service with Equipment Monitoring infographic.
IoT Condition Based Monitoring Opportunities
Monitoring machines using the IoT offers significant business value including increased quality, manufacturing throughput, and service performance. Of these opportunities, transforming service has become a proven way to improve equipment performance and profitability in the field and in the factory.
Service transformation is a good target because service organizations have increased their maturity in the last decade and are now more sophisticated and data-driven. In addition, IoT platforms are now available to ensure companies get beyond a “proof of concept” to improve performance and profitability at scale. And as Dr. Yuri Hovanski, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Brigham Young University (BYU), explains, “Companies have been using predictive maintenance for decades. It’s not new, but the cost to deploy it 20 years ago was phenomenally expensive.” The barriers to adopt these platforms continue to drop as solution providers offer more configurable, predefined applications that are faster and less expensive to implement.
Adopt a Pragmatic Approach
Companies have to get started, but they shouldn’t try to accomplish everything at once. Instead, it’s essential to adopt an incremental approach. Companies can organize their service and machine monitoring efforts in small, manageable, incremental “sprints” that will result in broader, transformational value. Each effort should build on the prior one. Companies should create a framework as they solve the first problem, focusing on operationalizing their capabilities and building repeatable solutions.
Extend the Value
As companies become more experienced and data-centric, they can increase the maturity of their service applications and analytics. They can apply results in their own facilities to improve how they service smart products at customer locations. They can extend to other use cases such as customer self-service, remote maintenance, predicting yield, optimizing manufacturing processes, predicting scrap/rework, or reducing process variability. There is a lot of value available across the enterprise and the value chain in addition to improving service.
This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor PTC (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => Seven Keys to Improving Service with the IoT
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[post_modified] => 2023-12-15 15:04:08
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[post_date] => 2023-04-24 09:00:42
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[post_content] => Are the next steps of IT/OT convergence at hand? Siemens would say yes. IT and OT are blending more than ever in some new offerings under an umbrella of data-driven manufacturing.
Siemens just announced the expansion of their Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) framework into Industrial Operations X. Industrial Operations X includes Industrial IoT, Industrial Edge, and Mendix Low-code technologies. The focus is on making it easier to integrate manufacturing IT (such as MES, HMI/SCADA) and OT (such as PLCs, DCS, and other automation). Siemens aims to deliver more flexible, interoperable, scalable, and open solutions. If they succeed, it should lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
Software-defined automation for speed and ease of converging IT and OT is another angle. News there includes the virtual PLC, an S7-1500 controller with no hardware to install. Another breakthrough is configuring OT with modern IT tools such as GitHub and text-based programming. Beyond bringing their products together, Siemens intends to help transform manufacturing engineering processes. With the skills shortage, this may be crucial.
They also announced that the IIoT platform MindSphere will be called Insights Hub starting this week. Insights Hub is one domain capability within Industrial Operations X. The foundation for all other Insights Hub applications is an app called Monitor. Other apps include OT such as SIMATIC Energy Manager and Manage MyMachines as well as new ones in IT such as OEE, Quality Prediction (combining asset and process data to feed a machine learning model), and Asset Health and Maintenance.
Siemens explains that this set of announcements is the beginning of a journey. Clearly, it expands the ecosystem they started with Industrial Edge. New IoT-based applications are in the works both from Siemens and from partners and customers leveraging low-code capabilities. HANNOVER MESSE is always a big time for Industry 4.0 announcements, and Siemens always has a big presence. Thank you Jon Heidorn, Raymond Kok, and Roland Melzer for delivering us a preview of these announcements. We look forward to following the continued convergence of Siemens’ automation and software offerings to enable manufacturers to accelerate their success.
[post_title] => Siemens Advances IT/OT Convergence with Industrial Operations X (Insight)
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[post_modified] => 2023-04-24 23:44:30
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[post_date] => 2023-04-12 11:00:09
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[post_content] => I was recently able to catch up with Oleg Shilovitsky for an update on OpenBOM. In addition to his high blogging productivity, he and the OpenBOM team have been even harder at work developing new capabilities and expanding their reach. I’ve enjoyed following OpenBOM’s progress because they take a practical approach to solving manufacturer’s problems, started small, but built on a modern cloud stack using graph database technology so their architecture is built to scale and handle very complex problems.
They obviously help manage bills of material, one of the most challenging aspects of manufacturing definition and communication, but that’s not all. The solution has been extended to become a “digital thread platform”. OpenBOM now offers PDM features and basic capabilities for inventory, order planning, and purchasing. They’ve also continued to support more mature, complex processes by adding more data / lifecycle management features like change management, revisioning and integration with ERP. They offer an alternative, or an add-on, for smaller organizations or small groups like prototype shops in larger companies to get away from spreadsheets to manage BOMs, inventory, and orders.
As I mentioned, they’ve been hard at work. Recent enhancements allow better adoption, such as the addition of user-defined commands using a no-code approach. They have also extended onboarding training, which is included in their subscription. This is on top of embedded support in the product.
What should we look for going forward? OpenBOM will continue to support more complex scenarios including those in enterprise companies and more regulated industries. These include security enhancements to support SOC2 and offering more cloud deployment options. Lastly, they just announced a graph navigation capability that takes advantage of their core graph modeling capabilities to help companies explore their product data relationships more directly. Stay tuned for more on the opportunities that will offer.
OpenBOM is still small, but they are important. They are exploring new ways of working and filling an important need in the market. We expect to see them continue to grow and expand.
[post_title] => OpenBOM becomes a Digital Thread Platform (Insight)
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[post_date] => 2023-04-12 09:00:31
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[post_content] => 
What are realistic expectations for a manufacturing execution system (MES)? Should you expect more from MES? MES has been available for decades. That is good news and bad news. Those with experience of older systems – and even many MES offered today – may have a limited view of what such a system can do. Today’s MES is an enterprise system that can drive business success in many dimensions.
You will hear from Thiago Martins, Managing Director at Accenture and Francisco Alameda Lobo, CEO at Critical Manufacturing working with MES daily as Tech-Clarity’s Julie Fraser talks to them about:
How can manufacturing software accelerate life sciences innovation? By combining MES with an operations digital twin.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systemes(registration required).
[post_title] => Is the Digital Twin Attainable?
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[post_date] => 2023-04-05 08:00:44
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[post_content] => 
How well is collaboration working in the AEC industry? We surveyed 393 people whose companies design, engineer, or construct the built environment to find out about collaborative design in AEC, including multidisciplinary design and BIM.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required).
The study shows that architects must design concepts with strong aesthetics and build their company reputation while also recognizing the need to meet practical project objectives like project cost and schedule. Unfortunately, poor communication and increased design complexity, which emerged as two of the most common challenges to meeting project objectives and outcomes, make this difficult. Beyond this, almost two-thirds of survey respondents report that design complexity has increased over the last five years.
Insufficient Collaboration and Design Integration Approaches
Designers recognize that working collaboratively across disciplines helps manage increased design complexity. However, the most common forms of collaboration include email, in-person meetings, PDFs, and hard-copy sheets. These methods are inefficient and error-prone. In addition, despite the fact that about two-thirds of respondents report that design integration across disciplines is critical or important to project success, the design integration approaches they typically use, like collecting 2D or printed documents, are also insufficient.
The Multidisciplinary Design Opportunity
Although the AEC industry faces increased complexity, the design and construction community has been hesitant to adopt new technologies and integrated data platforms. Our research shows, however, that surveyed companies are exploring and migrating to multidisciplinary design to drive efficiency, improve project outcomes, and reduce cost (among other drivers).
Multidisciplinary design marries the efforts of different disciplines into a cohesive process. This increases efficiency and provides impact visibility to designers. They can assess the impacts of choices on a design's cost, more efficiently deal with clashes and geometric constraints, and better tackle complexity driven by code upgrades, material improvements, and energy performance.
The Multidisciplinary Design Transition
The study finds that full multidisciplinary design adoption is still relatively low in the architecture and engineering community, with only 22% of respondents using it on all projects. But about two-thirds of respondents have a positive perception of this methodology, and over one-half of companies are using it on at least some projects.
Although there are barriers to adoption, including organizational, technical, and business concerns, companies report valuable benefits. Over two-thirds of companies who have adopted multidisciplinary design for all projects report more complete designs and fewer errors and omissions. About one-half report increased efficiency and improved constructability. The opportunities are compelling and available. The eBook shares the full details of our findings.
The design and construction industry is highly fragmented. Companies range in size and the cross-section of industry segments they serve. Project
participants often span regional, country, language, and cultural boundaries. Multiple disciplines rarely share common offices, which only exacerbates the challenge of communication. With increasing project complexity and shrinking access to well-trained resources, communication is strained. The industry must uncover ways to become more effective.
Greater Collaboration is the Key
Architecture and engineering companies must increase their ability to effectively collaborate across design disciplines. Traditional collaboration approaches are insufficient. Fortunately, there are proven benefits to digitally integrating designs across disciplines. Typical integration methods must also improve, and the data demonstrates that the AEC design community is moving towards more enhanced collaboration workflows leveraging tools based on BIM. The role of BIM is also maturing to be a system of record. Although the domains of design are vast, our research concludes that companies are exploring and migrating to multidisciplinary design to drive better project outcomes and profitability.
Multidisciplinary Design Remains Novel in the Maturity Cycle
Full multidisciplinary design adoption is still relatively low, but those adopting it are achieving significant benefits. The overall perception of multidisciplinary design and BIM is positive, yet it faces a number of challenges. Most companies are not willing to trade off significant design functionality for those benefits. We expect to see greater adoption of multidisciplinary design as systems mature, but also expect that companies must maintain an open approach to BIM tools to accommodate an environment consisting of multiple authoring tools.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => The State of Collaborative Design in AEC
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[post_date] => 2023-03-27 10:00:38
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[post_content] => We spoke with Hexagon following a recent event launching their Nexus platform. Hexagon already offers a wide range of solutions supporting the product lifecycle, including design and engineering; production; and metrology and inspection portfolios from its Manufacturing Intelligence division and others including the newly acquired Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and quality management (QMS, ETQ) solutions. This release gives Hexagon a platform to connect across their solutions, and solutions from others, to execute and automate workflows that cross application boundaries.
They’re taking a data-centric approach to connecting heterogeneous solutions, providing contextual data to streamline across steps in the process and create a common digital thread. Hexagon is calling Nexus a “digital reality platform.” They compare it with a digital twin. They say it’s different, though, because it is connected in near-real-time with products and machines to integrate information support automation in addition to user-driven tasks. In their words, Nexus “connects applications, hardware, and anything creating data in a democratized manner.”
An example we explored during our call was an electronics designer changing a printed circuit board in their PCB design tool that would share the relevant change with a mechanical designer in the CAD tool. In addition, they pointed out it could autonomously run a simulation in the cloud to validate the resulting change, for example heat exchange. The example helped me grasp the fact that Nexus is intended to share data directly between different applications and tools, not just pass the information to the next user in a traditional workflow. That level of data integration is highly valuable.
The platform provides central services like visualization and analytics and will be offered as Nexus Platform Services. In addition, they’re busy developing Nexus Applications on the platform, including several announced in the launch event and a roadmap of solutions in development. They will also provide partners with the ability to develop applications for Nexus and plan to create an active ecosystem of applications and services offered through Nexus. In the future, they intend to open application development to customers so they can create their own connected workflows.
Hexagon has a wealth of solutions for manufacturers, and now has a platform and strategy that will allow customers to get the most out of them in a connected, data-centric, cloud-based platform. Thank you Stephen Graham and Robin Wolstenholme for taking the time to provide more detail and answer our questions, Michelle Boucher, Julie Fraser, and I appreciated and enjoyed it.
[post_title] => Hexagon Launches Digital Reality Platform, Nexus (Insight)
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[post_content] => What are some keys to success with Industry 4.0? And what does mindfulness have to do with it? Listen to this fireside chat with Julie Fraser, hosted by the Industry 4.0 Club’s Mike Ungar and Mike Yost to start thinking about your ecosystem for success.
An ecosystem is the environment in which a variety of compatible organisms - or organizations - coexist. Some elements go together and some do not. For Industry 4.0, each player must review fit and ability to support each other over a longer period of time. Rather than thinking of vendors and customers, moving to view each other as partners is a start.
What does that entail? How can manufacturers identify partners that will truly partner and support them? What can the solution providers do to bolster their customer-partners’ success?
In this video, you’ll get to hear what Julie and the two Mikes think and have seen. You’ll also hear about a trend that’s beyond the “talking about” stage and into the “take action” stage this year. Industry 4.0 technologies will support this earth-level ecosystem issue. Julie also takes some questions from the LinkedIn Live audience.
Thank you, Industry 4.0 Club, for the opportunity to have a conversation on all of this!
[post_title] => An Ecosystem Enabling Manufacturers and Industry 4.0 Providers to Flourish with Julie Fraser
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[post_content] => I recently got an update briefing from iTAC Software AG, which was eye-opening. It appears you can now get deep out-of-the-box MES/MOM functionality plus low-code ways to extend the software. This company has offered #MES for many years but has recently expanded on many fronts.
The original company philosophy of bidirectional integration with equipment has served iTAC well in its core discrete industry segments. That’s been strengthened by adding Cogiscan to the iTAC group. Customers have advanced in their ability to be agile and respond to change also, as the group also includes DUALIS GmbH IT Solution advanced planning and scheduling.
Some of the newer functionality is compelling.
[post_title] => iTAC MES/MOM Adds Low-Code, Logistics, and Edge Analytics (Insight)
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How can high tech manufacturers improve manufacturing engineering? We surveyed 177 people directly involved with manufacturing engineering and found that modernizing processes and technology drives higher manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. These improvements are crucial to profitability as customers demand high quality, personalized products at increasingly faster time to market; all despite rising product and manufacturing complexity.
Unfortunately, high tech companies face challenges in process design as products, manufacturing processes, including:
Current Processes can be Improved
There is significant room for improvement. The majority of companies validate process plans with time-consuming and expensive physical prototyping. Physical prototypes bring abstract designs into the real world so engineers can identify issues and improvement opportunities. Most companies also use spreadsheets, which are prone to errors and file-based so they are not conducive to collaboration. These approaches lead to late discoveries and expensive process validation.
Leverage Visual Approaches
Trading physical prototypes for digital validation reduces time and cost. A significant number of companies already use some form of virtual representations. Static visualizations can help engineers see an issue in the digital world before committing to a physical prototype or manufacturing equipment.
Adopt Simulation
Beyond static images, virtual simulation helps designers go beyond “seeing” to virtually experiencing the production process. While only about one-quarter use either 2D or 3D simulation, it’s a promising technology and a potential for significant planning and validation improvement.
Increase Quality
Responding companies also indicate that they can reduce ECOs by over one-third. They do this by improving manufacturing process design using virtual technologies. Top Performers are more likely to find physical manufacturing issues in a virtual model than Others who are more likely to discover them in physical prototypes and actual production.
Get Started
It’s time to improve manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. Companies can follow the lead of the Top Performers to increase maturity in how they plan, validate, and communicate manufacturing plans. To increase maturity, manufacturers should adopt the best practices of the Top Performers, including using integrated solutions such as 3D and simulation for manufacturing engineering.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes DELMIA (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => Transforming High Tech Manufacturing Engineering
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Why is effective bill of material management critical to digital transformation? What should you look for in a BOM management solution? Our white paper serves as a reference tool for manufacturers selecting a system to improve the maturity of their BOM management practices.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full buyer's guide please visit our sponsor, PTC (registration required).
This white paper is an update to our original buyer's guide published in 2020.
This Buyer’s Guide is a reference tool for manufacturers selecting a system to improve the maturity of their BOM management practices. The guide is composed of sections covering software, service, and vendor requirements, along with some special considerations. These are all important factors that impact implementation success and ROI.
Each of these sections includes a checklist with key requirements to investigate when selecting software to enable and improve BOM management. The guide also touches on special considerations for companies to keep an eye on by industry. It also shows how digital BOM management plays a critical role in supporting digital transformation initiatives, including the digital twin, digital thread service transformation, Industry 4.0, and more.
Clearly, a user should be able to enter a BOM manually from a screen by selecting a combination of materials, components, or lower-level assemblies. Systems should also be able to accept and validate an input file, for example, a spreadsheet or XML file, to import / upload BOMs from another system or in a “mass load” scenario. Finally, the system should be able to develop BOMs from underlying engineering tools for efficiency and to prevent manual transcription errors, also known as the “bottom-up” approach.
Of these, the most complex scenario is the bottoms up creation from a Computer Aided Design (CAD) tool. This scenario requires the BOM management solution to digitally interpret the contents of the CAD structure. CAD systems typically contain a lot of information about a product, making good CAD integration a primary need.
I feel rejuvenated after a briefing with Apprentice. Their Tempo suite is a fresh approach that marries the latest enterprise mobile and SaaS technologies with composable applications for pressing industry issues. Yes, there’s a SaaS MES – but there is more for the plant, quality lab, enterprise, and manufacturing network. It serves the product lifecycle,…
What most contributes to supply chain resiliency? What are the challenges and impacts of doing it well? Can better collaboration, cadence, or technology improve manufacturers’ capability to respond to disruptions? What does it take to recover with operational continuity and minimal negative impact? What is the role of departments beyond Supply Chain? Tech-Clarity is conducting…
How can manufacturers improve manufacturing engineering? We surveyed 177 people directly involved with manufacturing engineering and found that modernizing processes and technology drives higher manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. These improvements are crucial to profitability in the industrial equipment industry as customers demand high quality, more personalized products at increasingly faster time to market; all…
Jim Brown, Michelle Boucher, and I got an introduction to Canvas GFX and its Envision product for interactive work instructions in a recent briefing. The question I, as the manufacturing analyst had, was: Can a system for model-based interactive work instructions really be easy enough for non-engineering users to embrace? Canvas GFX says yes, and…
We’ve been talking about operationalizing innovation for some time. It’s a crucial need because, as our research shows, innovation for products and services is among the top factors driving long-term business success. It can’t be left to organic inspiration or luck. It must be targeted and driven to provide a repeatable, scalable market advantage that…
Jim Brown and I are jazzed up after learning about how Elisa IndustrIQ is combining the data management and analytics of the parent telco to strengthen already successful manufacturing applications. This combination of data structures, analytics algorithms for AI and ML, and applications that serve specific industries’ needs can deliver very high value. Elisa IndustrIQ…
It’s exciting when you see a company reinvent themselves to take on an important, unsolved problem in the industry. That’s exactly what Actify has done. We’ve been following them from the time of their early, very successful CAD viewer product line SpinFire through their new evolution to create a holistic solution for automotive project management….
How can life sciences manufacturers accelerate their innovation? One way is by recognizing and creating an operational digital twin that’s connected to MES. We will discuss: How digital twin of operations and MES support rapid innovation while ensuring high-quality, compliant, and cost-effective operations Why manufacturing matters through the lifecycle of life sciences products starting in…
Current economic conditions make service profitability and asset longevity more important than ever. How can service organizations leverage the IoT to transform service and improve service performance and profitability? This Buyer’s Guide offers seven ways that can help companies get started or expand on early efforts, apply lessons learned from initial projects, and drive repeatable…
Are the next steps of IT/OT convergence at hand? Siemens would say yes. IT and OT are blending more than ever in some new offerings under an umbrella of data-driven manufacturing. Siemens just announced the expansion of their Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) framework into Industrial Operations X. Industrial Operations X includes Industrial IoT, Industrial Edge,…
I was recently able to catch up with Oleg Shilovitsky for an update on OpenBOM. In addition to his high blogging productivity, he and the OpenBOM team have been even harder at work developing new capabilities and expanding their reach. I’ve enjoyed following OpenBOM’s progress because they take a practical approach to solving manufacturer’s problems,…
What are realistic expectations for a manufacturing execution system (MES)? Should you expect more from MES? MES has been available for decades. That is good news and bad news. Those with experience of older systems – and even many MES offered today – may have a limited view of what such a system can do….
How can manufacturing software accelerate life sciences innovation? By combining MES with an operations digital twin. Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systemes(registration required). Table of Contents Rapid Life Sciences Innovation New Realities and Opportunities Manufacturing Must Keep Pace Digital Twins: Marrying Virtual and Real Operations Digital Twin…
How can industrial companies achieve value from their digital twin initiatives? Are their goals achievable? We’ve all heard the promises of significant value from digital twins, let’s discuss how to reach that value. Jim Brown will host a webinar with Prashanth Mysore and Fabien Roger of Dassault Systemes to share examples of how companies use…
How well is collaboration working in the AEC industry? We surveyed 393 people whose companies design, engineer, or construct the built environment to find out about collaborative design in AEC, including multidisciplinary design and BIM. Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required). Table of Contents Profitability…
We spoke with Hexagon following a recent event launching their Nexus platform. Hexagon already offers a wide range of solutions supporting the product lifecycle, including design and engineering; production; and metrology and inspection portfolios from its Manufacturing Intelligence division and others including the newly acquired Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and quality management (QMS, ETQ) solutions….
What are some keys to success with Industry 4.0? And what does mindfulness have to do with it? Listen to this fireside chat with Julie Fraser, hosted by the Industry 4.0 Club’s Mike Ungar and Mike Yost to start thinking about your ecosystem for success. An ecosystem is the environment in which a variety of…
I recently got an update briefing from iTAC Software AG, which was eye-opening. It appears you can now get deep out-of-the-box MES/MOM functionality plus low-code ways to extend the software. This company has offered #MES for many years but has recently expanded on many fronts. The original company philosophy of bidirectional integration with equipment has…
How can high tech manufacturers improve manufacturing engineering? We surveyed 177 people directly involved with manufacturing engineering and found that modernizing processes and technology drives higher manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. These improvements are crucial to profitability as customers demand high quality, personalized products at increasingly faster time to market; all despite rising product and…
Why is effective bill of material management critical to digital transformation? What should you look for in a BOM management solution? Our white paper serves as a reference tool for manufacturers selecting a system to improve the maturity of their BOM management practices. Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full buyer’s guide please visit…
