Infuse innovation
CPC isn't futuristic for Detroit Diesel, Diversified Systems, Medtronic Physio-Control, and United Defense
By Mary Stearns Sgarioto, Contributing Editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 9/1/2001 6:00:00 AM
The name Detroit Diesel invokes images of gleaming heavy-duty engines, not a soft concept like collaboration. Yet managers with this Detroit-based developer and manufacturer of diesel engines say that Web-based collaboration around product-related content is yielding some pretty tangible benefits.
"[Collaboration] saves time, improves quality, cuts down on travel, avoids mistakes, and shortens the time it takes to get a product to market," says Philip Good, manager of integrated product development. The company—which makes engines that are used primarily in trucks, automobiles, mining machinery, and $500,000 Hatteras yachts—has deployed a collaborative product commerce (CPC) solution from UGS, Cypress, Calif.
CPC solutions use Internet technologies to facilitate internal and external sharing of product-related data. "People get involved right from the beginning—suppliers, too—so there is no need for a cross-functional team meeting on-site every week," says Good.
Getting suppliers involved during the design phase seems to create value. "Instead of doing all the design in-house and pushing outward, if you were sharing design information, you could catch problems earlier in the process—or suppliers could preempt the problem," says Jon Derome, a senior analyst with Boston-based Yankee Group. "The supplier is able to offer more higher-value services instead of just doing manufacturing capacity or manufacturing componentry."
Detroit Diesel's UGS Unigraphics computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) system is tightly integrated with i-Man—also from UGS—an enterprisewide product content management software solution that manages large amounts of data associated with a product's life cycle. Another software product, UGS Product Vision, allows Internet access to visualize the product geometry created by the CAD system. The software accesses the Unigraphics files, represents them in a "lightweight" format that a user can view alone, or in conjunction with data managed by i-Man. The UGS e-Vis Collaboration solution enables multiple users to conduct virtual meetings over the Internet, and perform design collaboration sessions or utilize supplier exchange sites. The product works in conjunction with Product Vision to enable visual collaboration.
"Using Product Vision, we can translate designs from different CAD systems and merge them using product visualization. The visualizer allows us to do cross-sections and check for interferences while we are on-line with one or more parties and simultaneously looking at what we're doing," says Good.
The e-Vis Collaboration software, more specifically, allows a user to put an engine assembly on a PC-based workstation while the supplier brings in its model from another CAD system. According to Good, "You actually can merge or assemble it during the session, check for interferences, and ensure that if there is a flange or hose connected, it's in the right spot."
Once there is a complete description of an engine, Detroit Diesel can set up a session with a customer and virtually place it in a chassis. "We can check things out electronically before we make the first engine," Good says.
Whether a manufacturer crafts diesel engines like Detroit Diesel, performs contract manufacturing, engineers life-saving medical devices, or builds high-profile military equipment, Internet-based CPC solutions are supporting design innovation and compressing time-to-market. CPC's ability to better manage design data is squelching the plague of inefficiencies that value chains face.
Engineering focus
The ability to deal with disparate sources of product-related data generated interest in software from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Agile Software, which bills its applications as collaborative manufacturing commerce solutions. According to Stanley Bentley, president of Indianapolis-based Diversified Systems, his company offers design and engineering services, rapid prototyping, and electronics manufacturing services. Bentley says Diversified originally brought the Agile Anywhere solution onboard for its change management capabilities, but has capitalized on Agile's other collaborative strengths.
At the center of those strengths is Agile Anywhere's ability to bring together product-related data from multiple sources and systems under one cohesive, Web-based system.
"There are no ladies soldering circuit boards in the back room anymore," Bentley says. "There are all kinds of automated machines, and each has a unique programming file, work instructions with an appended text file, digital photographs, test procedures, diagnostic instructions, and a quality plan." With Agile software, Bentley adds, "Basically, you control the soul of the product in an environment that speaks the language of manufacturing and engineering."
Bentley says Agile Anywhere is primarily sold as change management software, "but in automating change processes, you must define the business processes you are going to use as a company," he says. "You are forced to decide how information is passed across the functional blocks that form a company. Once you have done that, there is a central repository for the data [such as drawings, bills of material, and design files] and a central monitor that determines when a change has been made to any of these critical data files."
Bentley says this monitoring function forces a recognition that a change has occurred, and more important, an agreement that it is okay for it to occur. "Because of that, when an OEM decides to come to us, it has the ability to send all the data needed to produce its product," he adds.
The most significant change that occurs when working with customers, Bentley says, is that it takes fewer front-end resources to deal with them. "Even more important, it has greatly improved the speed with which we can do things for them," he notes. "No six levels of redundancy are needed. If I have to go three places within my customer's facility to get data, I need to be certain that I have the most current data. Because of that, I have to cross-check each piece against every other piece."
With Agile's software, this cross-checking of data is automated. "It increases the speed with which I can respond to a change, and I have more confidence in the accuracy of the data," Bentley says.
CPC nets savings
Measurable cost savings already have been realized through collaboration, according to Medtronic Physio-Control, a Redmond, Wash.-based manufacturer of portable defibrillators. The company uses the eMatrix Platform and the Collaborative Web Interface from Chelmsford, Mass.-based MatrixOne, a provider of collaborative commerce solutions. Additionally, Medtronic Physio-Control has built its own integration between MatrixOne and the enterprise resources planning (ERP) system it uses, MFG/PRO from Carpinteria, Calif.-based QAD.
According to Boris Cononetez, Jr., who manages the document area as well as product data for Medtronic Physio-Control, the company chose the MatrixOne open-platform approach to collaboration, and not a "canned" solution, so as to satisfy government regulations and deal with the uniqueness of its business.
With plans for further collaboration in the works, Medtronic Physio-Control has begun collaborating with Xerox, which supplies the company with the plethora of printed documentation that accompanies the manufacturer's defibrillators. This documentation is mandated by the Federal Drug Administration and Federal Aviation Administration.
Previously, Medtronic Physio-Control was using an outside supplier to print numerous manuals and other materials, according to Cononetez. "To get the price down, we would have to buy them in large quantities." Cononetez says that meant lots of scrap when changes were made and printed materials were updated. "Now we have sourced with one supplier—Xerox— which is doing our printing on-demand. They get an electronic purchase order from our ERP system, log into MatrixOne, and download production-ready print files. Our manuals are available within hours. Instead of throwing away hundreds of thousands in scrap, we are doing almost 100 percent of the printing on-demand," he says. The next step, Cononetez adds, is collaborating with other suppliers, such as providers of molding, printed circuit boards, and hardware.
Medtronic Physio-Control already has saved $250,000 per year by reducing overhead, and $25,000 a month in reduced scrap. The manufacturer initially purchased the MatrixOne software to manage manufacturing documents, but now uses it to manage all enterprise documentation.
High-profile collaboration
Manufacturing high-profile products such as the U.S. Army's Crusader—a 40-ton, self-propelled, 155-mm howitzer—is the business of Arlington, Va.-based United Defense. The company designs, develops, and produces ground combat systems and naval weapon delivery systems for the U.S. and its allies.
To manage enormous amounts of data for a large design project, United Defense chose Metaphase, a product knowledge management (PKM) system from Milford, Ohio-based SDRC, a provider of e-Business collaboration solutions for the product life cycle. United Defense calls the solution its integrated data environment (IDE).
According to Saumya Sanyal, senior information technology project manager for United Defense's armament systems division, the system ensures that engineers across the country—approximately 1,300, including managers, and logistics and reliability engineers—are using the same dataset. It also is used for change management purposes in multi-project or concurrent development situations. "It allows us to manage data distributed across all of the sites where Crusader work is done," says Sanyal. "Crusader is a large program. We needed to prioritize functionality and deliver a series of prototypes, and that requires a change control system."
United Defense collaborates with its own divisions, as well as major subcontractors connected to IDE via wide area network. These include General Dynamics, Honeywell, Raytheon, and several United Defense division sites. According to Sanyal, the company collaborates with other defense systems and component suppliers using a Web interface to IDE.
"There now is a common dataset environment across the whole team, so there is no lag between companies that need access to work-in-progress. In the past, you could have shared directories, but now there is a rules engine in common and business processes," Sanyal explains. In the past, he says, if United Defense wanted to share data with another company, "I would have to identify the data, take it to my boss, go to contracts, then legal, then ship it off. It would then go to the contracts people on the other side, then finally to the engineer I was trying to work with."
The SDRC software has allowed United Defense, "to set boundaries ahead of time and embody rules of the system so legal and contract processes are embedded in the system. I know that the type of data I am accessing is okay to use for collaborative purposes," says Sanyal.
Cultural change also is required to collaborate. As Sanyal relates, "United Defense managers began by wanting a lot of control and were very 'vault-centric.' Slowly, as they got comfortable with the system, it evolved to be more enabling."
As manufacturers find new ways to disseminate and share product content via Internet-based CPC solutions, some experts observe that technology is becoming an enabler of new business models and roles within value chains. "Design collaboration changes the kinds of processes the manufacturer is willing to outsource," says Yankee analyst Derome. "If a manufacturer can collaborate either upstream or downstream, then that changes what portion of the manufacturing it can outsource to the partner community."
| FOR MORE INFO: | ||
| Agile Software www.agilesoft.com |
MatrixOne www.matrix-one.com |
PTC www.ptc.com |
| QAD www.qad.com |
SDRC www.sdrc.com |
UGS www.ugs.com |
| zweave www.zweave.com |
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