PLM workspace enables distributed process planning

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 24, 2004

Delmia Version 5 Release 13 (V5R13) has been designed in partnership with industry-leading manufacturers and their supply chains in order to support major new product programmes.

Delmia Version 5 Release 13 (V5R13) has been designed in partnership with industry-leading manufacturers and their supply chains in order to support major new product programmes.

The new release introduces key innovations that advance the collaborative definition of manufacturing processes.

For example, these new capabilities enable an OEM to export a portion of its manufacturing process plan, including product, process and resource (PPR) data, to a supplier for detailing and validation.

Once detailing is completed, the OEM can reconcile any changes back into Delmia Manufacturing Hub.

Collaboration between the OEM and its supplier are more efficient and effective and aid in the overall streamlining of the process planning efforts.

"Collaboration throughout the extended enterprise is a necessity for all manufacturing industries where connectivity between OEMs and suppliers are critical for competitiveness, said Philippe Charles, CEO, Delmia Corp.

"Delmia V5R13 is a major step forward toward enabling innovation in manufacturing engineering".

V5R13 further supports the production use of Delmia's solution for manufacturing process planning, detailing, optimisation and validation in the automotive and aerospace domains.

Delmia's V5 Process Planning Solutions provide breakthrough technologies that dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to update large product structures between the Engineering Hub and the Manufacturing Hub.

Enhancements for incremental updates and partial product transfer reduce this update time by as much as 90%, as compared to previous releases.

V5R13 now enables the process planner to reuse a single product model within the process plan (eg passenger seats in an aeroplane) while storing instance-specific attribute data.

This new capability streamlines the synchronisation between the Engineering and Manufacturing Hubs saving time, money and effort.

The Delmia V5R13 product portfolio brings business value to manufacturers in a number of areas.

Delmia V5R13 allows an OEM to export its product, process, and resource (PPR) data from the Manufacturing Hub for detailing by a supplier.

Users can then reconcile process plans detailed by the supplier with the OEM master plan stored in the Manufacturing Hub.

Delmia V5R13 introduces batch and incremental updates and partial product transfer to reduce the amount of time it takes manufacturing engineers to update large product structures between the Engineering Hub and the Manufacturing Hub New automatic line balancing features in Delmia V5R13 enable process engineers to evaluate the impact of multiple model mixes on the production system so that the optimal process plan and layout of the manufacturing line can be achieved.

Delmia V5R13 enables tooling designers to take advantage of resources and tooling created in Catia with Product Knowledge Template features.

Designers can create tooling models that will automatically adapt to changes in the product model, minimising the amount of time the process planner spends replacing tooling models when product designs change.

For example, the clamps of a fixture can automatically be positioned based on feature positions, such as location holes, on a given product.

Finally, Delmia V5R13 extends its openness to include XML interfaces that facilitate bi-directional communication with various manufacturing execution systems (MES).

With this capability, shop floor technicians can pass critical as-built, labour and change order data to the MES system with simple-to-use, touch screen compatible interfaces.