Siemens Tecnomatix FactoryFLOW

Summary

Siemens Tecnomatix FactoryFLOW is a material-handling tool designed to reduce non-value added work, minimize indirect labor costs and help realize lean manufacturing objectives.

Product Overview

As a manufacturer, you can invest millions of dollars in thousands of industrial engineering man-hours in an effort to squeeze as much productivity out of your direct labor as possible – machines on the line, tooling and fixtures, workers at their stations, and production processes. But what about indirect labor? Surprisingly, very little gets invested toward indirect labor evaluations. The signs of trouble are often difficult to see – operational costs might be running high for unexplained reasons or there might be abnormal levels of non-value added work being performed. Difficulty quantifying and analyzing indirect labor can cause you to turn back to what you know best – direct labor issues. In the meantime, the quest to achieve lean and efficient operations remains just out of reach because only half of the factory operations are being evaluated.

FactoryFLOW is a graphical material handling system that allows industrial engineers to optimize a factory layout based on material flow distances, frequency and cost. This is accomplished by evaluating and analyzing things such as part routing information, material storage needs, material handling equipment specification and part packaging (containerization) information against the factory layout.

When you use FactoryFLOW to make smarter decisions, you can create efficient factory layouts with reduced part travel distances, lot sizes, and inventory levels, as well as improved communications and throughput. All of this will lead to decreased manufacturing costs and increased production efficiency.

Siemens Tecnomatix FactoryFLOW is a top manufacturing simulation tool Engineering‘s expert team leverages for customers to improve their planning and production processes. Click here to learn more from Siemens.

Manufacturing Challenges Addressed

• Improving factory layouts can be time consuming
• Layout planning is usually not graphical
• Poor communication among layout designers
• Difficult to communicate the layout plan with other team members
• Difficult to track factory layout alternatives
• Difficult to leverage material flow, storage needs and other layout factors in the pre-planning process

Key Features of FactoryFLOW

• Generate material flow diagrams directly on factory model (AutoCAD or FactoryCAD)
• Calculate aisle congestion diagrams
• Compute material handling equipment needs
• Container packing in storage areas
• Operator walk path analysis
• Calculate tugger utilization and optimize tugger routes based on material needs

Business Benefits of FactoryFLOW

• Analyze and optimize material handling
• Quantify and compare alternative layout costs
• Identify and reduce non-value-added material handling costs
• Easy to use, does not require extensive training
• Allows for visual and quantitative comparisons of alternative layouts

Interested in speaking to one of our experts? Contact us at info@indx.com.