Chad Decker Part 1: Beginner’s Guide to DELMIA

Gene: We’re here today with Chad Decker. So, before we start, tell us a little bit about yourself and what your area of expertise is.

Chad: Thank you very much for the introduction!

Chad: I’m Chad Decker. I’m part of the Delmia Operations Consulting Group, and I’ve done various things over the years, a lot of experience in manufacturing – over 25 years – in various roles in IT and consulting and things like that.

Chad: Before I started here, I was also a former customer of Dassault before joining.

Chad: So that’s me.

Gene: Okay. And again, just to be clear, at Dassault, you focus primarily on the Delmia Brand of Software, correct? So, just to get a little bit into your background here, can I assume that you talk to A LOT of manufacturers who are applying Dassault’s planning/scheduling software into real life production?

Gene: If so, how does this experience apply to Delmia?

Chad: Most of the things that I’ve done over the last 20 plus years are really working with manufacturers; so, people who are taking the raw materials or semi-finished goods and turning it into something that they can either sell or supply to another plant or, distribution center, etc.

So, yeah; my job is really working with those operations folks and understanding what their challenges are and then, how we can use either technology or process improvements or systems to assist them in making things.

Chad: After all, everybody wants things better, faster, and cheaper. So, the question that defines my job is “how do we aid manufacturing in providing first class quality or additional throughput or getting by with fewer people?”

Chad: And so, I’ve done that for a number of years.

Gene: So, obviously in doing this interview series, I’ve looked a little bit more into Delmia because – up until now – my scope of understanding with Delmia was very narrow (since, obviously, we always deal with the manufacturing side).

Gene: Dassault is very much a company whose services and industry reputation for the longest time has been simulation and design software company. Obviously, over the past few decades, it has been branching out into other software – with Delmia being the suite of software that brings the design/planning portion into production.

Gene: Just because I have been asking a lot of my interviewees this question, I might as well ask you too: How exactly can Dassault take this expertise in design and simulation and so forth and bring it to customers into the manufacturing space?

Chad: That’s a great question!

Chad: So, when you look at manufacturers – say, I am a working for a manufacturer and I’m making something – I may have some challenges where, let’s say, the assembly line or the cell was set up in a particular way. Was that optimal? It was what it was, right? It might be safe; but do I have ergonomics issues?

Chad: One of the things that Delmia can do is take that 3D model, maybe put it up against a point cloud and say, “okay, here is my line. Here’s the thing that I’m making. Can I fit material handling equipment in there? Am I/do I have a person who’s reaching?” Yeah. Maybe in an ergonomics, we can model people as well, right?

Chad: “Am I reaching too high? Am I reaching too over? Is this setup conducive to someone working there?” Again, “do I have the most efficient line?”

Chad: Also, you can simulate things like, production quality, all that. If you’re laying out a new line, you can maybe get the best optimum layout instead of having to build a cardboard model or a mockup and you can get very close; And, again, you can take an existing line and like I was saying again, “am I most efficient in terms of ergonomics or layout or flow?” And so, there’s a lot of things that we can do rather than “let’s just work harder” or “maybe if we just keep at it, things will improve”.

Chad: You can gain a lot of things from simulation and get there faster.

Gene: Okay, and in speaking with Adrian wood, he was very much “okay, if Dassault is a company that is known for – at the very least – design and simulation that DELMIA is the suite that helps make these ideas come to life.”

Gene: For the uninitiated, can you tell us what exactly Delmia is as a suite, and what exactly it does and what are some of the advantages of it?

Chad: So, Delmia is actually an acronym, and a lot of people don’t actually know this. It actually stands for “Digital Enterprise, Lean Manufacturing, Interactive Applications”.

Chad: So, what does that mean? If you look at Dassault’s compass, we’re in the bottom quadrant and that designation is “V plus R” and really it’s where the virtual meets the real.

Chad: Because again, when you’re talking about manufacturers in general, your business is making things, right? So, I’m either assembling things, fabricating things, or I’m transforming them from either a raw goods/semi-finished state OR even a finished state into something else that will get consumed by another downstream process or whatever that is.

Chad: But I’m doing something, right? So now, how do we take the virtual like again, a line layout or representative of a line layout or a drawing a 3D model and then transform that and where that meets the real thing happening.

Chad: So, we’ve got any number of products:

1)    We can get digital manufacturing – which you can do manufacturing bills and materials, you can author your process plans, work, constructions, things like that;

2)    You can do some of these simulations – we’re talking about line layouts, et cetera;

3)    We’ve got our APRISO suite, which is actually the manufacturing execution piece – now we can look at enforcing quality steps that I may have authored in the process plan;

4)    I can do things like keep track of genealogy/traceability for again, further quality steps, or maybe I am in a regulated industry where I’m required to keep track of all those things;

5)    We’ve got products like ORTEMS – which is advanced planning and scheduling (so now I can take some of those materials and process plans and understand how that is put together and give an optimized schedule for things like that).

Chad So, we’ve got any number of things that can interact with the shop floor and assist people in either making things of a better quality or faster or with greater throughput or being able to do the same throughput with fewer people, et cetera.