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PLM, a Silver Bullet for Manufacturing? Autodesk has another take on it!
PLM, a Silver Bullet for Manufacturing? Autodesk has another take on it!
By Bill Lydon - Contributing Editor
PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is being promoted as the next investment manufacturing companies should make to improve quality, efficiency, and productivity. PLM suppliers are defining it as an information strategy, an enterprise strategy and a transformational business strategy.
Autodesk is promoting Digital Prototyping as a better approach for the majority of users with significantly lower complexity and cost. It should be noted that Digital Prototyping does not cover the full scope of PLM but the question for a user to consider is, what do they need? Autodesk believes that a digital prototype centric approach with the data management supporting the flow of the digital prototyping is a more valuable and faster way to achieve higher ROI (Return On Investment) than PLM. Autodesk’s Digital Prototyping philosophy is to improve the process with less complexity than PLM.
Companies from small manufacturers to large have a wide range of requirements from simple to complex (example, airplane manufacturers). The Autodesk Digital Prototyping software tools provide another way to increase manufacturing efficiency, quality and throughput without a complete PLM deployment.
What is PLM?
PLM is being heavily promoted at industry events and there has been a wave of PLM announcements. As more companies claim a stake in the PLM market, the definition becomes less clear.
Wikipedia defines Product lifecycle management (PLM) as "the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design, and manufacture, to service and disposal. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise."
A major PLM theme is a single repository for all information that affects a product, and a communication mechanism between product stakeholders: including marketing, engineering, manufacturing and field service. A broad vision of PLM includes:
- Managing Design and Process Documents
- Bill of Material Construction and Control
- Electronic File Repository
- Built-in and Custom Part Documents
- Environmental Compliance Materials Tracking
- Task Assignment Management
- Workflow and Process Management Change Tracking
- Data for ERP Systems
Autodesk Digital Prototyping
Autodesk is providing software to do the virtual design of a complete product, do real world simulations, and simulate manufacturing - eliminating early prototypes and multiple pilot production runs to find problems. Industrial design, engineering and manufacturing teams collaborate through the use of a single digital model. This is accomplished by building on the company’s suite of design products and the addition of Navisworks.
Navisworks Factory Layout
Navisworks software provides a set of tools for visualization and optimization, multi-CAD data aggregation of factory models, and team collaboration. It combines together product data, tooling and fixture data, layout and facilities data from different CAD formats, and creates a single 3D digital model of a factory. Real-time animations of digital factory models are used to analyze the model to check for collisions and identify space constraints. The digital factory model can also be published in a highly compressed lightweight format and shared with suppliers and partners. Team collaboration is accomplished with the Autodesk Navisworks Freedom software that is a free viewer.
Navisworks Collision Detection
Features include:
- Multi-CAD data aggregation of 3D data from different CAD systems.
- Data formats supported include AutoCAD, MicroStation, 3D Studio, ACIS SAT, ASCII Laser Scan, Bentley AutoPLANT, Faro Scan, DWF, PDS Design Review, IFC, IGES, Autodesk Inventor, Informatix MicroGDS, JT, Leica Scan, RVM, Riegl Scan, Revit, SketchUp, STEP, STL, VRML, and Z + F scan.
- Interactive visualization and real-time walk-through and fly-through of factory models.
- 3D digital review and interference checking tools to help experience factory models and check for interferences to detect potential issues such as space constraints and equipment collisions.
Navisworks Factory Fly-through
Other key software pieces are Autodesk’s Vault software that tracks work in process and Product Stream software that handles engineering change orders.
This Autodesk approach is in step with the company’s track record of supplying lower cost solutions to a broader group of users. AutoCAD was introduced in 1982 as the cost effective alternative to large expensive software and is the 2D CAD supplier of choice for the majority of users today. The company’s digital prototyping solutions are consistent with this history.
The good news is users have more choices at various price points.
More Information: www.autodesk.com/digitalprototyping