Teamcenter for Assembly Manufacturing
Industry Challenges
The need to get more customized, high quality products to market faster has driven manufacturers to distribute production over many plants and suppliers. This strategy to “plan anywhere, build anywhere” provides manufacturers the economy of scale and scope needed to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Such a strategy also brings enormous manufacturing planning and collaboration challenges. Leading manufacturers are looking for technologies and methodologies that allow them to efficiently author, simulate and manage manufacturing information throughout their organization and with external suppliers. Manufacturers want software tools that can align manufacturing plans quickly and intelligently based on changing product configurations.
Solution Overview
All too often, we see companies fixate on providing a solid foundation to perform product designs, while disregarding the significance of their manufacturing processes. A manufacturing process management solution offers a portal to connect all facets of both the design and build lifecycles. Siemens Digital Industries defines their Manufacturing Process Planner (MPP) as a manager of manufacturing data, processes, resources and plant information in an integrated product and production lifecycle environment. A cornerstone of MPP is the integration of multiple tools and activities that encompass a wide range of production capabilities and benefits, including alternative production line scenarios, more efficient assembly lines, reduced lead times for new product launches, shorter production times, reduced Work-In-Progress (WIP) inventories, and most importantly, a significantly more rapid response to product or process changes.
Manufacturing Process Planner (MPP)
Manufacturing Process Planner (MPP) allows design and manufacturing engineers to concurrently develop product and manufacturing process definitions. This ensures that manufacturing constraints are reconciled during product design and vice versa. Using Teamcenter MPP’s powerful change management capabilities, manufacturers can quickly react to changes originating at any point of the design/build lifecycle. By connecting all members of the design/build process from design, engineering and manufacturing to plants and suppliers into one virtual enterprise, MPP helps manufacturers implement the best production strategies for process efficiency and maximum output. It provides alignment between the engineering Bill of Materials (eBOM) and the manufacturing Bill of Process (mBOP), ensuring that all designed parts and assemblies are being consumed by the correct manufacturing processes. MPP’s built-in time analysis feature can record value added and non-value-added steps and activities of the manufacturing process, supporting data collection for specific lean initiatives. Finally, MPP provides the ability to generate 2D/3D work instructions for enhanced communication between engineers and operators, as well as easy portrayal out onto the shop floor. With MPP, manufacturers can extend Teamcenter’s reach and lower the cost of ownership for their software solutions.
Features of Manufacturing Process Planner
- Fully integrated product and manufacturing (process, resource, plant) data to concurrently build product and process plans
- Highly intuitive, configurable user interface to optimize process design and analysis steps
- Reconcile eBOM and mBOM quickly using powerful accountability check reports
- Comprehensive workflow and change management for both product and manufacturing engineering
- Process Gantt and PERT charts to accurately represent process sequence and associated information
- Visualization and management of operations, resources, variants and changes in dynamic 3D environment
- Advanced time management capabilities to optimize value added and non-value-added operation time
Benefits of Manufacturing Process Planner
- Shorten time to production
- Accelerate new product introductions
- Quickly react to changes at any stage of the design, build and/or production process
- Decrease operating costs
- Ensure overall product and process quality
- Enable engineers, designers and shop floor operators to collaborate efficiently
Electronic Work Instructions (EWI)
The industry has witnessed an increased demand for step-by-step work instructions for manufacturing operations, encompassing part fabrication all the way through final assembly construction. Teamcenter’s Electronic Work Instructions (EWI) solution enables companies to communicate all manufacturing process information, including process steps, 2D/3D visuals, mark-ups, standard texts and Product Manufacturing Information to the shop floor. EWI helps ensure that manufacturing work instructions are always current and that accurate process steps are presented to users at all times via the real-time integration with Teamcenter. EWI captures engineering change requests and process improvements immediately, then makes them viewable to multiple areas of the manufacturing plant. Conversely, through the problem report feature, EWI empowers shop floor operators to easily communicate back to the planners about any issues that prevent instructions from being followed and executed. Among other benefits, EWI can help shop floors move towards becoming completely paperless. Since everything is captured in a user-friendly web application, the printing and compilation of shop floor packets or work packages is diminished. And because process information is electronically available, transfer of knowledge becomes much easier in instances such as when sharing with new hires or supporting operator reallocation.
Cortona3D
Cortona3D provides manufacturing engineers a sophisticated 3D simulation tool to validate the feasibility of assembly processes. It enables the simulation of assembly processes, human operations and automation systems. Once manufacturing processes are defined in Teamcenter, Cortona3D can validate that the sequence of operations is optimized to avoid collisions, ensure safety and reduce cycle time. This minimizes downstream production risks by providing the capability to virtually analyze multiple manufacturing scenarios. Each step of the animation process contains an adjustable time length, with the intent to best mimic a real-time assembly process. Notes and mark-ups can be added to animations for instances such as to provide an operator with certain torque criteria or to highlight potential assembly risk areas.
Features of EWI with Cortona3D
- Embedded 3D data, text, images and movies for enriched communication
- Web-based and HTML5-compliant
- Accessible from ERP and MES applications
- Integrated with Cortona3D for presenting animated 3D work and automatic work instruction creation
- Works on all major browsers and mobile tablets
- Fully integrated to Teamcenter Manufacturing Process Planner (MPP)
Benefits of EWI with Cortona3D
- Enables easy-to-use, intuitive, web-based interaction
- Allows quick rending and presentation of animated 3D data
- A complete and paperless solution to manage manufacturing work instructions
- Allows full traceability of process changes to ensure up-to-date work instructions
- Enables on demand access to work instructions
- Facilitates two-way collaboration between planners and the shop floor
- A lightweight, easy-to-deploy and low maintenance application for digital work instructions
Engineering-Siemens Synergy
Engineering Industries eXcellence is a long-standing partner and niche system integrator for Siemens. We have also achieved the Smart Expert Partner designation, which differentiates us as a Siemens Digital Industries and customer-validated industry expert, specifically in their digital manufacturing software: Teamcenter Manufacturing, Shop Floor Connect, Shop Floor Integrate, Tecnomatix Plant Simulation, Tecnomatix Process Simulate, Opcenter Execution and MindSphere. As a certified reseller, solution provider and system integrator for Siemens across many business units, Engineering is the only Siemens partner in the world that has the combined vision, industry experience, resources and technical skillset to deliver integrated solutions across all these different offerings.
