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Project Log
Faster product development
Kennametal Widia India has been able to shrink production
time and achieve better data integrity using a Wrench solution. Girish Vibhute
provides an insider’s view
"Efficient management of engineering drawings is the key to faster
new product development "
-Girish Vibhute
Assistant Manager
Design
Machine Tools Business Unit Kennametal Widia India |
We manufacture machinery for the automotive and defence industries,
and deal with components of our different product lines. We were looking for
a drawing management solution as we lacked a system that could effectively deal
with documents relating to engineering drawings that were part of the manufacturing
process.
A system was needed that could handle the process involved in the development
of the machines and the drawings associated with the products. Different engineering
drawings are constantly required for manufacturing new prototypes for New Product
Development (NPD); also, a lot of existing drawings were reused for future product
development. An efficient management of the engineering drawings is the key
to faster NPD, reducing the lead-time to market.
Manual processes were a problem
We were totally dependent on people to maintain and store hard copies of the
drawings. Retrieval of the hard copy drawings was a challenge, and so was the
search for the appropriate ones. It took a lot of time and effort as we have
around 150,000 individual drawings. Over a period of time, some of the engineering
drawings undergo changes to suit customer requirements, and these revised copies
never tallied with the production department. There was also delay in issuance
of drawing prints due to manual processes. Additionally, there was no link between
drawings and the BOM (Bill of Material), and manual entry of BOM had to be done,
which was prone to error.
Another woe was that there was no control over multiple copies of the same drawing.
There was a lack of security over our intellectual data as it was being copied.
Collaboration among cross-functional departments was absent as there was no
sharing of the massive volume of digital product data available with different
departments like engineering, marketing, purchase, manufacturing and service.
Another problem was poor visualisation for the users as there were no tools
to access the engineering drawings created by the design department online.
Product history was not captured and maintained systematically, and most of
the learning and design calculations during NPD were lost. Besides, there were
issues of change management where the changes were not communicated to the end-users
well in time. There was no system to monitor the progress of the NPD while delivery
times were shrinking.
- Faster NPD: After the implementation of
Wrench, we have observed that there is data integrity in the systems.
With the help of the solution we have been able to speed up new product
development (NPD) by 50 percent due to the online availability of design
data, reuse of existing variants, and flexible search capabilities resulting
in meeting customer deadlines. The product configuration is 15 times
faster due to structured BOM.
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- Single-window faster for retrieval of engineering
drawings: There is single-window access for design engineers, and
an absence of manual keying-in and duplication of engineering data in
the system. There is also online access to the latest drawings with
a defined security. Sharing of drawings is possible which results in
powerful information exchange.
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- Supports collaboration: There is now concurrent
engineering during the design stage, and 40 percent reduction in the
number of drawing prints. Sharing of drawings has also resulted in automatic
workflow management for the drawings, which are also approved online.
There is automatic print management and complete security for design
data in the server. Additionally, there is a faster change management
and linking of design calculations with the possibility of viewing and
marking 200-plus file formats.
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- Better visualisation: Better visualisation
is possible by viewing the solid models and reviewing the project status
with colour codings.
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The chosen one
We went ahead with Wrench from Wrench Solutions (formerly CADD Solutions) as
they were in constant touch with us for quite some time and were aware of the
problems faced by us. We did not evaluate any other vendor for the implementation
and went ahead with their solution. The Wrench team knew that we required better
data integrity and faster retrieval of our engineering drawings for NPD, along
with support from the local Wrench team.
Handling legacy data
Before the implementation we listed the characteristics of an ideal single-window
access system for designs. There was also a lot of customisation which was required.
We had to customise the screen and the graphic user interface as per our requirements.
The transferring of legacy data was a tough task and took a lot of time as the
hard copies had to be scanned first and then entered into the system for storage.
This meant the conversion of the legacy data accumulated over many years into
digital data. Training and a smooth change-over to the new system was challenging
as the organisation had to be fine-tuned to the processes of the new system.
We are using 20 user licences of the product.
Up next
We plan to scale up the Wrench solution so that it is capable
of handling 3D designs. Additionally, Wrench, which is installed in our premises
right now, will be extended beyond our officeto other remote locations of Kennametal
Widia in India.
— As told to Abhinav Singh
abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com
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