This week’s interview, Mike Bradford talks about how the DELMIA software suite can benefit automotive manufacturing to prepare your organization for an industry 4.0 future!
You won’t want to miss this one!
Gene: In our last interview, you touched upon a lot of great strengths from Delmia. However, since our company works mainly in the automotive industry, could you give us some examples of how this software could benefit companies regarding automotive manufacturing?
Mike: Sure! Let’s think about what’s going on in the EV (Electronic Vehicle) world right now!
Mike: The industry is rapidly changing based on new battery technology. With all these improvements happening in such a short time, companies really want to get a head start on their competition in this budding industry. In this new market, companies want to be the fastest one to get through production as the 1st to market essentially wins.
Mike: So, that the ability of Delmia to shorten that time to market by doing integration with the design side, virtualization, and then release directly to the execution side? That helps you shrink that lead product lead time, which is critical in the EV environment.
Mike: Another example comes from a webinar I did recently regarding Body in White (BIW). And people a lot of times think about body in white as being all automated, dealing with nothing but robots, and without the need any other systems.
Mike: But here again, by virtualizing your robotic line first, making sure everything works efficiently, making sure the material supply is efficient and effective, making sure that all the robots are the right size robots so that, when you go to execution, your production lines can take the workload.
Mike: DASSAULT actually assists a large truck manufacturer who drive their entire body in white line from our Delmia Operations Management Solution, APRISO. So, for one of their truck production lines, they built this entirely new truck line to be extremely flexible; in fact, they actually have potential for 220,000 possible combinations of trucks on a single line!
Mike: So, all the robotics were simulated, designed and programmed in virtual and then sent down to the Delmia Operations Management Solution. We then get – from their planning system – the sequence of trucks that are going to go down their line and we orchestrate the whole process. We give each robot the programming it needs for the particular truck that’s in front of it. We know which materials are needed, where the materials are and what distinct materials need to be provided for each particular truck in the line.
Mike: In essence, we are orchestrating that entire process and that flexibility has saved them tremendous costs! We are doing things in 1 line that many companies do in multiple lines! Changes are quicker and much more effective.
Mike: So, again, the ability to do engineering changes and new product introductions more quickly is given them value. That’s the second area.
Mike: The third area would be in the area of sequencing, because we can help you manage and ensure your sequencing internally; whether you’re just doing ship to sequence or assemble and ship to sequence or manufacturer assembling ship to sequence, we can manage that sequencing process and keep your materials coordinated with your subwoofers, assemblies coordinated with your assemblies, coordinated with what your customer is expecting to receive.
Mike: We have a seat manufacturer in Europe that has a two-hour broadcast window from when they get the broadcast for a particular seat set to when that seat set has to be at their customer and they’ve used Delmia Apriso to manage that for 12 years now. They’ve Never had a shutdown and never shut down the customer line, which anyone at Automotive knows if you shut down a customer line, you’re going to pay anywhere from 10,000$ to 60,000$ a minute.
Mike: So that ability to run nonstop and never shut down a customer line brings huge value.
Mike: Those are three examples.
Gene: Out of curiosity – since it seems to me that Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 are a big talking point these days – before we get into the APRISO stuff, how exactly is DASSAULT preparing for this this industry 4.0 future?
Mike: Great question!
Mike: So obviously the virtualization aspect of DELMIA is part of it; because that aspect of DELMIA gives you the ability to virtualize and simulate is key.
Mike: Communicating with devices, equipment, sensors. We’re not a IIOT provider ourselves, but we work with multiple IIOT devices and providers – so we can give you that connectivity that you need.
Mike: One of the mistakes I saw companies early on in manufacturing 4.0 make is they had a group doing IIoT and they had a separate group doing MES or MOM! Well, those two need to be completely tied together because all that IIoT data is great, but it has to be it has to be actionable and it has to be contextualized. What does it really mean? What does it apply to? How can we use it?
Mike: By tying those 2 things together, we help in the manufacturing 4.0 process. The whole virtual reality/augmented reality component is a big part of manufacturing for 4.0 and then the ability to do big data analysis and that sort of thing is also a key component, which we support.
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D4M is a privately owned company specializing in leveraging digital technologies to accelerate manufacturing clients to their transition to Industry 4.0. With long tenure and hundreds or successful projects, we are confident that our approach and experience provides the roadmap to help bring clarity and efficiency to your manufacturing operation.
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