Design Moves to the Next Frontier

Almost 30 years after industry began embracing computerized design technology, too many companies still rely on a relic of the early 20th century—physical drawings—for communicating product information between engineering and manufacturing. Although they develop 3D products using 3D CAD technology, most designers expect production engineers to figure out how to manufacture the products using 2D representations. Their adherence to 2D-centric communication compromises the quality, efficiency, and cost improvements that emerging technologies such as 3D product lifecycle management (PLM) technology provides.

›› One clear benefit of virtual 3D  manufacturing is the ability to detect clash and fitting conflicts via simulation early in the design process. It allows companies like Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC), which uses digital manufacturing to build jet engines, to save hundreds of hours of design time on each program. .

Drawings are typically generated so late in the design process that flaws, which could have been handled inexpensively with PLM, cause expensive production headaches. With current 3D PLM technology, there is no reason to separate product design from manufacturing design with 2D drawings. Design and manufacturing engineers collaborating throughout the product development process through 3D solid models in a PLM framework produce high quality at low cost. 2D drawings are useful for inspection at the end of the design process, but in the 3D-centric process, manufacturing engineers do not use them to handle major changes for form, fit, or function.

The shift from 2D drawings to 3D solid models as the communication building block in automotive design lays the foundation for digital manufacturing, a major component of PLM. Digital manufacturing is the primary device for automotive companies to compress their production cycles, reduce their expenses, lessen tooling, and save plant construction costs. It is a virtual 3D representation of the manufacturing process exactly as that process would work in real life. It provides a holistic view of products, design, and manufacturing, and puts them in the larger context of a product’s lifecycle from conception to end of life. Digital manufacturing supports process, tooling, and factory design planning; simulates operations, ergonomics, and other human factors.
 

‹ ‹ In this 3D mockup, the electrical tubing subsystems (in yellow) of a P&WC engine are examined for proper fit with adjacent parts. The digital process allows for careful review of systems before physical assembly. .

These capabilities enable companies to:

• Mitigate risk from errors Establish proof of concept
• Begin machine design sooner in the   process
• Identify bottlenecks, collisions, and  worker issues before they happen
• Reduce or rework scrap material.

The economic gains from these efficiencies are hard to overestimate. Digital manufacturing environments give engineers a clearer understanding than 2D drawings of the tools required for production. It also improves training for product and tool designers on manufacturing processes. Overall, it leads to more back-and-forth communication early in the design process, when changes cost almost nothing. As part of a broader PLM suite that includes supply chain management, digital manufacturing encompasses all internal and external stakeholders in a collaborative process that breaks the linear pattern of design-planning-tooling-production and enables them to all happen at the same time.

Drawing from the same pool of 3D solid models that represent the finished product and its components, suppliers can start production planning and tooling months, if not years, before they would have received a 2D drawing with which to start. Process planning had long come after product planning and was a matter of educated guessing born of experience. In digital manufacturing, they are developed concurrently with product designs and are more precise by orders of magnitude.

› › P&WC cut the time spent on the assembly design phase of a recent project by 20 percent using CATIA V5. .

Simulations—visually and analytically—verify that a manufacturing operation will perform as planned. Operationally, engineers can use digital manufacturing applications to model shop floors to minimize collisions by changing operation sequences.

Surveys of digital manufacturing customers identify annual returns of anywhere from five to 10 times their annual investments in the technology. The U.S. Navy credits modeling and simulation processes with $370 million in total cost of ownership savings on a Bath Iron Works surface ship program. Pratt and Whitney Canada cut 20 percent from its assembly time after it implemented a PLM system around a central repository of 3D solid models. The repository enabled the company’s suppliers to keep abreast of design changes throughout the process, so when designs were finalized, most of the tooling and production was already planned. European auto parts supplier SERRA saw its design time drop 40 percent and its assembly line layout costs drop 60 percent after PLM implementation. According to a Dassault Systemes survey of companies in various industries, the benefits that digital manufacturing has yielded include:

• 30% reductions in time to market
• 65% reductions in design changes
• 40% reductions in planning manufacturing processes
• 80% reduction in time spent searching for information
• 15% increases in production throughput
• 13% overall reductions in production costs.

Engineering creativity and innovation are going into products at a faster pace than ever. Those designs, however, seldom turn into profitable products. Not because of designs flaws, but because of flaws in the process that introduce errors and stretch production cycles. Economics might have spared inefficient companies until fairly recently, but things are becoming more difficult each year. Market economics have changed radically since the days when a single product could have a multiyear lifecycle with few modifications. Product lines are more fragmented and lifecycles shorter as tastes change and subcontractors rush to keep up. Companies that cannot respond to shifting customer demands by producing high-quality products in tight time frames will not survive the next downturn or consolidation.

‹ ‹ Virtual prototyping enables P&WC to verify accessibility and maintainability of aircraft engines. It virtually optimizes and validates engine removal and maintenance by demonstrating the process using a human manikin. It helps the company gain acceptance from the aircraft manufacturer. .

 
The main barrier to agile design and production processes is the industry’s adherence, mainly among suppliers, to 2D drawings. 2D drawings have become habit; not a technical necessity. Processes using 2D drawings for communicating design parameters throughout the supply chain cannot support the market agility and cost controls that manufacturing companies need to remain profitable. They cannot afford the time-consuming linear processes and inherent quality troubles that stem from 2D.

The transition to a fully 3D-based product lifecycle requires suppliers to make technology investments, but it does not have to be painful. Most suppliers already design in 3D. All that remains is to put 2D drawings into their proper role—at the end of the process, where they are effective for final verifications.

Robert Brincheck, director of the automotive business unit in the Americas for Dassault Systemes, has more than 15 years of experience in the automotive industry. He has  worked at GM, Magna International, and several product development companies. Send comments via e-mail to by clicking here. Please reference “Design Frontier, November 2005” in your message.

It was almost 50 years ago that General Motors started transitioning from ink and Mylar to computerized design, which soon led to 3D CAD technology. At the time, forward-looking executives realized that the company’s 24-month product development cycle lagged behind market demands, and that hand-drawn designs were the culprit. Although it has taken since then to realize computerized 3D’s full potential, major automotive companies are now embracing 3D-based product PLM as the best way to get better products to market sooner.

Of the Big Three American auto makers, Chrysler made the earliest move toward PLM. The company stopped communicating design specifications through 2D drawings in the early 1990s, in favor of 3D models. That move drove some notable successes, mainly by enabling Chrysler to extract far more value from existing designs than it did before it went to 3D design processes. The Intrepid sedan, Ram series pickup trucks, and third-generation minivans all emerged from Chrysler’s 3D-fueled design processes. Chrysler’s success in the ‘90s prompted other manufacturers to consider all-digital design and production processes. —R.B.

As a management method that encompasses every facet of a product’s design, production, and upgrade from inception until its end of life, PLM’s goal is to make design and production processes agile. That agility supports aggressive innovation without compromising quality so companies can respond quickly to changing market demands with new and upgraded products

PLM is composed of three essential technologies: 3D mechanical design software, product data management (PDM) software, and digital manufacturing software. Together, these technologies provide a common framework for designing products and their manufacturing processes simultaneously. The time saved by working on design and production concurrently gives companies more flexibility to deal with production quality issues before products go to market. Automotive and aerospace companies are the heaviest users of PLM today. However, as many of them move toward full digital manufacturing, they are requiring their suppliers to implement PLM solutions as well, so the entire design and production process is a seamless digital whole from parts to final products.

A major component of PLM, digital manufacturing enables companies to model their production processes virtually, yet with real-life accuracy. Unlike often-used animations of production facilities, digital manufacturing simulates production processes exactly as they would work when a facility is built and operating. This enables companies to anticipate collisions and other problems that can slow production or erode the finished product’s quality. The key to digital manufacturing is for every component that goes into a product to exist as a 3D solid model. With the 3D models depicting parts’ exact shapes, dimensions, and physical properties, engineers can anticipate tooling and production needs almost as soon as a design starts taking shape.—R.B.

Product Information


Dassault Systemes
Paris, France

Pratt & Whitney Canada
Longueuil, QUE