With the swift change in the global market and the growing demand of the agricultural, construction and mining industries, heavy equipment manufacturers as well as companies are faced with a mounting challenge in keeping up with the increase in global competition. These companies are faced with keeping up with the new demands by increasing their production factors and improving their range of products to accommodate the requirements of the economy. There are also demands on the heavy equipment manufacturers for the reduction of the manufacturing and production period for the upgrade of older equipment and production of the newer equipment to ease up the demands of the market.
As a result, there is a need for the companies to continuously try out new ideas, test their effectiveness and efficiency and optimise the old ideas to make up for the performance glitches that might have been. This, in turn, helps the manufacturers in developing and delivering high-quality products with a possibility of high performance within the time frame needed by the global consumers. Therefore, to meet this demand, the products manufacturing process must coincide and correspond to the manufacturing process planning.
An insight into how the heavy equipment is made might help the manufacturers in keeping up with the planning processes required for them to meet their customers’ demands. The Siemens PLM Software Collaborative Manufacturing solution “Exact Iron” was put together to provide a guide into creating such an environment. The program will enable heavy equipment manufacturers create a manufacturing environment such that the manufacturers can produce their heavy machinery consistently at different locations in both developing and developed countries. It also ensures meeting up with the specified requirements for design, development, and production.
The software program ensures that there is an interlock of the original manufacturing design and production processes with the process design and development of an open Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform. Through this solution, the heavy equipment manufacturers will realise:
Improvement in the offline manufacturing modelling and planning which would, in turn, simplify the simultaneous development and design of heavy equipment as well proper management and evolution of the older manufacturing ideas for optimised production and design of safe and efficient human operations.
The enhancement of the design and manufacturing processes such that the product management and disposition processes are better improved and the market value is salvaged for better profits.
A single source of information on manufacturing via optimisation of the design and manufacturing process.
Product development process interconnected with manufacturing intelligence to ensure proper plants operations regardless of the locations as well as asset performances and better manufacturing process data made available in order to meet up with the demands whenever the need arises.
The Siemens PLM Software’s Collaborative Manufacturing Solution ensures production of advanced process and product configuration along with variant management. For heavy equipment manufacturers to comprehend the process and manufacturing data has been an impediment, especially in meeting up with the demands of the global economy. The process of maximising the company’s engineering and manufacturing knowledge has discovered to be a solution to the nagging challenge. Therefore, with the Teamcenter’s variant configuration, access is easily given to the necessary data needed for production.
Provision of Visual Process Planning
Another challenge faced by heavy equipment manufacturers is
the ability to effectively and efficiently ensure that a levelled production flow is achieved via managing the assembly lines and the multiple variants in the models. The production line cycle time can, therefore, be evaluated by the use of the PLM platform in developing the upstream development information into modelling tools for the new production line. This will also help in balancing the workload in the various workstations made available for production such that the customers’ demands are met with on time and finally validate the manufacturing process used in the parent plants.
Design Improvement to Facilitate a Closed-Loop Change in Engineering and Manufacturing
A constant upgrade in the designs and models of the products is needed to keep up with the tide of competition. This solution, therefore, provides an avenue for collecting relevant information and feedback from other outlets and manufacturing firms for the necessary improvement.
Access to Intelligent Manufacturing Instructions
The program exposes the engineers, workers, product managers and all other relevant parties in the product manufacturing process to the data related to their work stations and assists in the design and manufacturing processes involved in the products and production line. This also helps in salvaging the relevant time-to-market to ensure proper profit retention.