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Management Cover
Powered by PLM
Heavy machinery manufacturers are adopting PLM solutions
to reduce product design cycle time by sharing design-related data. A report
from Abhinav Singh
 Product Lifecycle
Management (PLM) solutions have brought about a complete transformation at some
of India’s heavy machinery manufacturing giants.
Larsen and Toubro’s (L&T) LTM business unit at Chennai manufactures
heavy engineering equipment used for tyre manufacturing; this equipment is exported
to Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Syria and Britain. Prior to going in for
a PLM solution, the unit had to use manual drawing boards, making documentation
a laborious task. Data retrieval used to take up to three hours. There was no
way by which data could be shared, and in case any variations were required
in the engineering designs, making a change was tough, and it was difficult
to notify other departments at short notice.
All this changed for the better after the LTM unit adopted a PLM solution called
Wrench from Cadd Solutions. Says Mohamed Ibrahim, executive, R&D and engineering
at the unit, “With the adoption of Wrench, we have been able to reduce
our design cycle time, and are able to bring in variations in our designs within
a split second. Moreover, we now have a common database, and our different departments
are able to share designs on a real-time basis. This has helped us meet customer
specifications at short notice and has streamlined our manufacturing processes.”
PLM gets popular
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PLM solutions can help to accurately develop
and supply spare parts based on drawings
Rajiv Jain
Deputy General Manager
Triveni Turbine |
Most heavy machinery manufacturers are now aware that manufacturing accounts
for a scant 30 percent of product development costs. The remaining 70 percent
lies in the design phase. PLM solutions can help manufacturing concerns bring
down the cost of designing a product, and also help them calculate product development
costs. Heavy machinery manufacturers have started realising that collaboratively
developing a manufacturing process plan in concurrence with product design will
let them optimise their entire product lifecycle. The benefit lies in identifying
and fixing production-related problems early in the cycle, and developing a
product design tailored for each manufacturing facility, which can be produced
as economically and efficiently as possible. This is in stark contrast to the
manner in which most companies traditionally operate, where designs were thrown
over the wall to manufacturing only for problems to be uncovered later. These
problems were costly and time-consuming to remedy through design modifications
and engineering changes which often resulted in designs getting scrapped or
reworked.
Faster design cycles
Before PLM, heavy engineering companies found it tough to manage their design
cycles. Explains Rajesh Gupta, senior deputy general manager, IT, BHEL (Hardwar),
“The manual workflow of drawings made the approval process very slow because
drawings were sent from one department to another seeking approval. Tracking
drawings was difficult, and the drawing revision system was slow and tedious,
which stretched the new product development cycle.” After implementing
Wrench, the complete scenario has changed as BHEL now has a single system for
managing drawings. All systems are integrated with the single entry of drawing
profile data, and easy tracking of drawings. This has led to reduced drawing
approval cycle time.
PLM solutions have also changed the complete scenario at BEL, Bangalore. Since
they went in for PLM adoption they have been able to reduce the average time
for approval of engineering designs from 40 to just six days. The approval time
for a change request for a drawing proposal shrank from 60 days to 20. The other
value of a PLM solution is that requests for printing documents and drawings
are now made online.
Meeting customer specifications
With customers insisting upon having proper specifications that fit their requirements,
PLM solutions have helped heavy machinery manufacturers customise their products
to deliver an exact fit. PLM solutions have helped these companies re-use older,
archived designs. Ibrahim says, “Sometimes designs in the archive may match
a customer’s specifications. We immediately retrieve and re-use them without
wasting time creating new designs.” Through the efficient use of PLM solutions,
all design-related data can be linked to customer-associated documents.
Similarly, all specifications can be linked to documents. This, in turn, helps
a customer spot variations and changes made by the manufacturer in a drawing.
PLM solutions have also resulted in faster design approval as digital signatures
can be used to sign off drawings within minutes rather than the days it took
when manual designs had to physically travel from one department to another
for approval.
Gupta of BHEL says, “PLM solutions have helped us reduce the design cycle
time resulting in reduced project implementation cycles and costs. The efficient
revision management facilitated by PLM solutions has led to the availability
of revised designs in the right place at the right time. The availability of
the latest drawing revision to manufacturing has resulted in the reduction of
re-work and rejection of the prototypes or products.”
Faster product rollout
Product innovation, new product development and faster product rollout are all
means of gaining competitive advantage and expanding market share. These activities
have been facilitated by PLM. Companies that hitherto dealt with huge volumes
of poorly organised engineering data find the clarity that comes with PLM to
be compelling. Explains Rajiv Jain, deputy general manager, operations, Triveni
Turbine business group (part of Triveni Engineering & Industries, which
specialises in the manufacturing of turbines), “PLM solutions can help
to accurately develop and supply spare parts based on drawings. Here the specifications
are stored in a digital format. This can go a long way in meeting a customer’s
spare part requirements.”
Shift towards 3D design
Manufacturers who are presently using 2D for design are now moving towards 3D.
Says Gupta of BHEL, “At present the PLM concept has been implemented within
our unit using 2D design as the base. From this we are moving to 3D-based manufacturing
with the help of CAD-CAM tools. We are also working on Web-based technology
for providing design documents to customers, vendors and partners through the
Internet.” Similarly, L&T’s LTM unit at Chennai is thinking of
extending its existing PLM solution to the Web so that product-related information
can be shared with customers across the globe.
As the heavy machinery sector is booming, increased adoption of PLM solutions
is on the cards. Indeed, PLM has now become an essential tool for manufacturing
heavy machinery.
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- Enables the formation of a centralised system whereby all the stakeholders
in a product lifecycle—those within the organisation as well as
external ones such as suppliers, partners and customers—can capture,
control, evaluate and leverage product design and manufacturing information.
- Assists in maintaining a streamlined flow of product information
across its entire lifecycle.
- Helps streamline engineering processes.
- Maximises re-use of earlier designs.
- Ensures that all value-chain participants are working to the same
product specifications.
- Eliminates product lifecycle barriers by unlocking product information
(e.g. product requirements, project data, process data, design geometry,
supplier data, product documents, etc.) that is trapped in isolated
applications, and unifies them in a common product-centric framework.
- Facilitates collaboration among product teams spread across geographies.
- Improves product innovation, cost-efficiency, time-to-market and
product quality by providing a real-time collaborative workspace.
- Aids product development teams in configuring, digitally mocking-up,
virtually publishing and studying new product ideas easily.
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abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com
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