Robin, Operations Manager at one of the most productive sites of Rapid Productions Limited, was looking one year ahead. The last year was a breeze. Once again, his operations were the toast of the company. But he knew that the next year was going to be a challenge and he also knew why. One of the reasons of the success of his operations was the experience of the design and manufacturing departments. Many of the engineers has spent their lifetime at Rapid Productions and were thoroughly aware of the design to manufacturing requirements. There were design engineers, who were aware of manufacturability aspects and there were manufacturing engineers who knew why a design was created in the way it was. But the problem Robin had was that many of these engineers were nearing retirement. As a matter of fact, 2-3 of them were retiring next year. Robin knew that much of the high productivity of the operations could be attributed to the limited number design-manufacturing iteration they had. Robin could easily identify that this was an important factor based on his past experience and he knew that he needed to do something about it. The design engineers were very aware of the manufacturing capabilities of the organization and especially of that site and ensure that their design took these “design for manufacturing” aspects into account. They were not only good at design but also understood the manufacturing implications. Additionally, the experience of the manufacturing engineers was also at hand. Robin understood that with these engineers leaving a lot of the knowledge they had acquired over the years would be lost. This would definitely affect the productivity of the site operations. New engineers joining the organization would take time in understanding the organization specific guidelines. He needed some mechanism to capture the available knowledge and reuse it. Though he knew that he would not be able to capture all 100% DFM knowledge, he wanted to try to setup a system using which they could create a knowledge management framework for DFM.
His search led him to DFMPro, software for automating DFM reviews with a rich set of APIs using which the software could be customized to handle organization specific DFM guidelines as well. Robin set up a task force comprising a few of the experienced design and manufacturing engineers. He also got the help of the customization services of Geometric, the company which developed DFMPro. The task force was assigned a project for a duration of 3 months in which they planned to capture the most important DFM guidelines in the form of customized DFMPro rules. One important feature of DFMPro was that it was integrated within the CAD environment so the rules could be checked during the design stage and corrected if required. Additionally, it also provided batch mode of operation with report generation using which multiple designs could be processed overnight and the generated reports could be viewed offline.
The task force set about religiously capturing the various scenarios, lessons learnt and knowledge gained over so many years in the form of rules embedded within DFMPro. Though some rules had to be noted only in the form of documents or checklists, many of the critical rules of thumb and manufacturing guidelines were successfully transferred to the software. Within a month or so, they had made significant progress. Robin decided to try out the system as a prototype for a few newly recruited design engineers. He was recently facing complaints from the manufacturing department about their lack of manufacturing knowledge. So, he decided to evaluate the newly developed automated DFM review system with the help of these guys. He observed that within a few days after deploying the new system, the design change requests sent by manufacturing showed a decline. Within a few more months, the complete system was in place. The retiring engineers monitored the performance of the system and contributed their knowledge to make it a success. The operation reviews showed that things were improved and the productivity of the new engineers was improving. Robin was happy with the results. Now that he had installed the system in place, he could face the productivity targets of the forthcoming year without any worries.
To know more about the ways in which you can benefit from DFMPro, write to dfmpro.marketing@geometricglobal.com
His search led him to DFMPro, software for automating DFM reviews with a rich set of APIs using which the software could be customized to handle organization specific DFM guidelines as well. Robin set up a task force comprising a few of the experienced design and manufacturing engineers. He also got the help of the customization services of Geometric, the company which developed DFMPro. The task force was assigned a project for a duration of 3 months in which they planned to capture the most important DFM guidelines in the form of customized DFMPro rules. One important feature of DFMPro was that it was integrated within the CAD environment so the rules could be checked during the design stage and corrected if required. Additionally, it also provided batch mode of operation with report generation using which multiple designs could be processed overnight and the generated reports could be viewed offline.
The task force set about religiously capturing the various scenarios, lessons learnt and knowledge gained over so many years in the form of rules embedded within DFMPro. Though some rules had to be noted only in the form of documents or checklists, many of the critical rules of thumb and manufacturing guidelines were successfully transferred to the software. Within a month or so, they had made significant progress. Robin decided to try out the system as a prototype for a few newly recruited design engineers. He was recently facing complaints from the manufacturing department about their lack of manufacturing knowledge. So, he decided to evaluate the newly developed automated DFM review system with the help of these guys. He observed that within a few days after deploying the new system, the design change requests sent by manufacturing showed a decline. Within a few more months, the complete system was in place. The retiring engineers monitored the performance of the system and contributed their knowledge to make it a success. The operation reviews showed that things were improved and the productivity of the new engineers was improving. Robin was happy with the results. Now that he had installed the system in place, he could face the productivity targets of the forthcoming year without any worries.
To know more about the ways in which you can benefit from DFMPro, write to dfmpro.marketing@geometricglobal.com
Visit http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com for additional information
No comments:
Post a Comment