Virtual Manufacturing

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Journal of Advanced Manufacturing SystemsVol. 1, No. 1 (2002) 113–119c World Scientific Publishing Company

VIRTUAL MANUFACTURING: AN IMPORTANT ASPECT

OF COLLABORATIVE PRODUCT COMMERCE

JOSHI MANDAR SHRIDHAR and SHAILENDRA RAVI

TATA Consultancy Services, 1-2-10 Coromandel House, S P Road

Secunderabad 500003, India

Tel: +91 40 7814515

The sweeping changes in the web-related technologies in the late 1990s have broughtparadigm shift in the business environment and strategic thinking of the organizations.To remain competitive in this ever-changing business scenario, the organizations arefocusing more and more on the globalization of businesses and collaboration in theproduct development across the value chain. This phenomenon has given rise to a newbusiness concept — Collaborative Product Commerce (CPC) that applies web-relatedtechnologies for the integration of various value-chain constituents from suppliers tocustomers. It focuses on cross-enterprise teams to share the intellectual capital in realtime to reduce the time-to-market in the product development life cycle.

Manufacturing is the central activity that encompasses product, process, resourcesand plant. Manufacturing activities across the enterprises with real time exchange of information result in the optimization of design, resources and processes, which is in thetrue spirit of collaborative product commerce.

One of the most important facilitators of the collaborative aspects of manufacturingis the virtualization of the manufacturing process components. It involves various visu-alization and data integration aspects. To deliver value added solutions in this area, itis imperative to have thorough expertise in the engineering services.

The focus of this paper will be on virtualization aspects of manufacturing in a col-laborative environment. Important paradigms of virtual manufacturing such as design-centered, production-centered and control-centered virtualization will be first discussedin brief. Virtualization of important components of manufacturing such as process plan-ning and design, equipment designs and factory layout and resource management willbe discussed in details. To conclude, significance of virtualization of manufacturing interms of business benefits in the collaborative product development environment willbe considered.

Keywords: Product data management; bill of process; product commerce; design collab-oration; process planning.

1. Introduction

Today, product design takes place in a collaborative environment, through real time

interaction of information among engineering and manufacturing teams, suppliers,

customers and partners. This new paradigm has led to increased productivity, abil-

ity to quickly respond to changing business needs, reduced product cycle times

and tighter integration of data within the company as well as suppliers, customers

and partners.

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114 J. M. Shridhar & S. Ravi

TCS Engineering Services builds and implements solutions around the best

of the breed products in the areas of CPC, tightly aligning engineering data

across the enterprise with their suppliers, partners and customers. The offerings in-clude strategy formulation, benchmarking, process re-engineering, implementation,

customization, administration, mentoring and support.

TCS consultants have been working closely with Fortune 500 companies in this

area and solutions have been offered, covering the entire gamut of PDM capabili-

ties. Shortcomings in CPC/PDM products’ capabilities to cater to specific customer

needs have been addressed by developing appropriate customization tools and util-

ities. Processes and best practices have been captured, consolidated and leveraged

across multiple implementations.

It has seen the role that it has played with several global companies change dra-matically with the advent of Internet in the late 1990s. The advances of technology

forced the enterprises to have a fresh look towards their strategies to survive, sustain

and succeed in the ever-changing business scenario. Globalization of the businesses

and collaboration across the value chain has become the order of the day.

In the changing environment, the competitive focus has been shifted from market

share an organization has, to the market size the organization is able to create.

This has led the change in the product development strategy towards collaborative

innovation. The information technology focus is shifted from mere sharing of data to

leveraging intellectual capital and knowledge management. The earlier process focuson concurrent engineering has given way to collaboration across enterprises. The

organizations are heavily focusing on cross-enterprise teams to share the intellectual

capital in real time to reduce the time-to-market in the product life cycle. This

requires involving suppliers, partners, customers and the knowledge workers with

the enterprise in the product life cycle processes.

The Collaborative Product Commerce (CPC) is, in fact, a concept that applies

web-related technologies for the integration of various value-chain constituents from

suppliers to customers. These value-chain constituents have their own set of sys-

tems with a focus on their own particular disciplines, and unsuited to the others’demands. They include various Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer

Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Whilst there is some common data,

in general, each system addresses different needs and different processes. The key

challenge is to integrate these systems to within a single, logical product lifecycle

process of an enterprise.

As shown in the Fig. 1, the product design and development is central to

CPC. Applications access the information made available by ERP systems within

an enterprise. The PDM and ERP together form the set of applications in the

enterprise that exchanges the information collaboratively with the value chain

constituents such as SCM and CRM. This entire flow of information and collab-

oration across the enterprises culminates in the concept of CPC. Major activi-

ties in product development are product design, manufacturing and maintenance/

troubleshooting.



Virtual Manufacturing 115

Fig. 1. Important constituents of collaborative product commerce.

Fig. 2. Collaboration aspects of manufacturing (Courtesy: EDS PLM Solutions).

Manufacturing is the central activity in product development that encompasses

product, process, resources and plant. It utilizes the data across the value chain.

Figure 2 pictorially summarizes the collaboration aspects of manufacturing.

Manufacturing activities across the enterprises with real time exchange of in-formation result in the optimization of design, resources and processes, which is

in the true spirit of collaborative product commerce. One of the most important

facilitators of the collaborative aspects of manufacturing is the virtualization of the

manufacturing process components. Virtualization of manufacturing involves vari-

ous visualization and data integration aspects. In the paragraphs to follow, we will

describe the significance of virtualization of different manufacturing components

and business benefits through collaborative environment.

2. Paradigms of Virtual Manufacturing

Before getting into various components of virtual manufacturing, let us first consider

different paradigms of virtual manufacturing in brief.




The virtual manufacturing could be, in general, defined as an integrated, syn-

thetic manufacturing environment exercised to enhance all levels of decision and

control.It has three distinct paradigms:

(1) Design-Centered:

It provides manufacturing information to the designer during the design phase.

It is the use of manufacturing-based simulations to optimize the design of prod-

uct and processes for a specific manufacturing goal such as: design for assembly,

quality, lean operations, and/or flexibility. In a broader sense, it also involves

simulations of processes to evaluate many production scenarios at many levels

of fidelity and scope to inform design (product and manufacturing system) and

production decisions.

(2) Production-Centered:

It uses simulation capability to manufacturing process models with the pur-

pose of allowing inexpensive, fast evaluation of many processing alternatives. It

is the production-based approach towards the optimization of manufacturing

processes, potentially down to the physical level. It also adds analytical pro-

duction simulation to other integration and analysis technologies to allow high

confidence validation of new processes and paradigms.

(3) Control-Centered:

It is the addition of simulations to control models and actual processes, allowingfor seamless simulation of optimization during the actual production cycle.

In the light of these paradigms, let us consider different components of virtual

manufacturing. There are four important components of collaborative manufactur-

ing that could be virtualized to realize the potential of benefits of virtual man-

ufacturing. They are — product, process, resources and the plant. The product

component includes various aspects such as product data design, product proto-

typing etc. As the design part of the product is mainly taken care of by PDM

(Product Data Management) applications, this discussion will not have much focuson this component. We will discuss in detail the virtualization of process, resources

and plant.

3. Virtualization of Manufacturing Process

The process component includes various sub-components as process design, process

configuration and tool and equipment design.

The process design involves process planning as the major activity. The entire

CAD product data bill of material can be broken down to create bill of process

(BOP). The virtual process planner can break apart the product design into in-

dividual machining and assembly steps. It can further assign tooling for the ma-

chining steps and develop the overall manufacturing process virtually. All the steps

mentioned above could be graphically represented as shown in Fig. 3.




Assign Activities + Assign Tooling + Design Work Area

Results in :

Process flow diagram with Bill of Process (BOP)

Fig. 3. Virtualization of manufacturing process (Courtesy: EDS PLM Solutions).

This type of virtualization leads to the following advantages:

• Reduced time to design the manufacturing process.

• Bill of process helps to get the exact details about each and every small step in

the actual machining process.

• Virtual simulation facilitates the experimentation regarding the tooling and ma-

chine set-ups. This leads to the optimization in the tooling and machining effort.

• In case of involvement of robots in the manufacturing process, this virtualization

yields maximum benefits in terms of tooling design and sub-process sequencing.

Based on the inputs of tooling design and process sequencing, the robot motions

can be simulated to optimization.

4. Virtualization of Manufacturing Equipment and Factory Layout

This is one area in manufacturing where the virtual simulation can be of tremendous

help. The simulation techniques could be very effectively used for factory equipment

layout, ergonomic assessment, container placement and operator walk path studies.

This could be used along with process tooling design to integrate human/robotic




and work-cell layout modeling, analysis and visualization. All these tasks can be

performed in a common graphical and evaluation environment.

The virtualization of plant layout could also give important insights in terms of industrial ergonomics. The human simulation and ergonomic tools improve worker

tasks and product design. This also entails in easy operator training.

Major benefits of virtualization of manufacturing equipment and factory layout

include:

• It saves a lot of fixed cost in terms of erection of actual plant or its prototype.

• Factory and equipment layouts could be altered time and again to optimize the

space and equipment positioning to suit best to the process design.

•

Operator tasks could be simulated to make them safer.• It facilitates effective analysis of material movement to optimize the machine tool

layout and process design.

5. Virtualization of Manufacturing Resource Management

The resource management virtualization results in minimizing tool inventory and

variety. It also improves asset utilization by increasing tool usage. It works in tan-

dem with the ERP/dedicated databases to reduce the time in searching duplicate

database for tooling information. The resource management virtualization leadsto the optimization of the tooling combinations and reduces the time wasted in

searching for misplaced tools.

Different aspects of the virtual manufacturing discussed above are put in prac-

tice by many organizations to realize the benefits of collaboration across the value

chain.

TCS has extensive experience with various clients in the areas of virtual man-

ufacturing pertaining to aerospace , plant maintenance , computer-integrated manu-

facturing and product design and shop floor control. TCS has worked with numer-

ous Indian and global clients providing end to end solutions in the areas of virtual

manufacturing.

In general, the benefits of virtual manufacturing could be summarized as follows.

6. Benefits of Virtual Manufacturing

• Direct impact on productivity of designers.

• Dramatically improve manufacturing design responsiveness.

• Improve confidence in designs through better communication and understanding.

• Improving team communication and understanding.

• Leverage investment in models of product, tooling and layout data.

• Reduce unnecessary re-work costs.

• Improve worker safety and efficiency.

• Reduce time to launch.




7. Conclusion

Manufacturing is the central activity in the product development. It encompassesproduct, process, resources and plant. It utilizes the data across the value chain.

One of the most important facilitators of the collaborative aspects of manufacturing

is the virtualization of the manufacturing process components. Virtualization of

manufacturing involves various visualization and data integration aspects.

Virtualization enhances productivity of the designers, which, in turn improves

manufacturing design responsiveness. It brings together the teams working across

enterprises, thus leveraging on the collective intellectual capital and knowledge

management. To a great extent, it gives more scope for collaborative innovation and

problem anticipation. This results in drastic savings in re-work costs. Virtualization

brings together the best of ideas/innovations across the value chain.

The synergy generated by virtualization of manufacturing is unparalleled.

Manufacturing activities across the enterprises with real time exchange of infor-

mation result in the optimization of design, resources and processes, which is in the

true spirit of collaborative product commerce. This results in the realization of the

ultimate goal of any organization: Adding value to the customer!

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Virtual Manufacturing