In this first post, we are going to focus our attention on the Data Management topic. We don’t pretend to cover all the scenarios and specifics but rather share what we can consider is the most efficient based on our customer’s experiences and the output of our DELMIA teams.

When we think about a “Product” we refer to the EBOM (Engineering Bill of Material) which is also called the EIS (Engineering Item Structure). In our 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, we author it using a combination of CATIA and ENOVIA Roles/Apps. This content represents the Design Master definition, both 3D model based (e.g., mechanical parts and assemblies) as well as content which has no 3D model based definition such as software.

We often suggest to our customers keeping this structure focused on Design needs and to use the Manufacturing Bill Of Material (MBOM) and Process Plan to tackle the production constraints. This will help to keep a clear split of responsibilities but also bring value thanks to the possibility to work in “concurrent engineering”. That means the engineering and industrialization activities can happen in parallel reducing:

• the product development time;
• the number of quality defects;
• the number of modifications.

Comparing the Generic/Classic way of working with the concurrent engineering approach, we have identified that most of the savings are related to the release process. Thanks to the collaborative work on the platform, we can anticipate significant industrialization feedback to engineering at the "IN WORK" state (design in progress). The engineering team can immediately introduce the modifications and release a product that will have less risks of being modified.

With some customers, they have achieved 40% less in number of modification and around 30% on lead-time reduction.

The Manufacturing Bill of Material (MBOM) or Manufacturing Item Structure (MIS) represents the Components and BOM structure of the Product to be manufactured. It is a fundamental input to production as well as ERP, primarily to drive the procurement process/sourcing process.

Within Digital Manufacturing, the MBOM represents the input for Process definition and provides the link to 3D visualization, including potential use within 3D Model-based Work Instructions, as well as within the family of DELMIA Simulation-based applications.

Process Plan definition contains the detailed list of operations and steps that have to be executed to build a finished or a semi-finished product. In the Process Plan definition, we also set operation times, required tools and components for each operation as well as the corresponding Work Instructions (Text Instructions, Data Collect Plans, Alerts and Sign Offs) for the operators. The Process Plan is mandatory to generate a Work Order in the ERP as well as to publish instructions to the shop floor (in our MOM (APRISO) solution) where they are performed.

At this stage, it is important to have a clear understanding of what system is the master of what data and why. Here under is our recommendation for master data management (Primary/Replica Matrix):

With the Resources, we refer to jigs & tools, workers, WorkCenter and all what is necessary to describe our plant layout. We use resources to have a dedicated structure to better organize our data based on the uniqueness of each plant.

Resource definition can be fully managed in the PLM or imported from another system and enriched with 3D model as well as other critical manufacturing attributes.

Today we have mainly two ways of assigning Resources to Operations as:

• Capable Resource, meaning associating a Resource reference to an Operation reference whatever the usage context of the Operation and Resource (no instance required, could be any Resource ref within the Database). As an example you will assign to a screwing operation one or multiple possible Screwdriver that could be used. At execution of this operation any of the Screwdrivers that would be available will work.
• Implementing Resource, meaning associating a given instance of a Resource within a specific Organizational Resource (Station, Workplace, Zone...). For this, you need to predefine a Scope link between a Parent node of your Operation and a Parent Resource node of the assigned Resource.

In terms of strategy, we are recommending to rely as much as possible on Capable Resource, since 19x. Our purpose is ensuring a more robust data consistency with Ortems and Apriso as well simplify the re-use and the change management. We have been introducing some additional granularity to the Capable Resources with the distinction of Primary (executing resource such as a Worker, a Machine, a Robot...) and Secondary (used tool) resources.

We have also recently introduced the capability to set some positions for Capable Resources for Virtual Build purpose in 21x.

Still if you intend to perform some full virtual build of your product in full layout context, you might need to rely on implement link today.

With all the information presented, we can see now a NON-exhaustive mapping of the minimal attributes to be managed for each object and their relations. This mapping is an example of what are the relations between the objects in the different applications (DELMIA DM, APRISO, ORTEMS, ERP):

In conclusion, we have seen how the 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows connecting the dots and guarantees coherent data management between different teams:

Thanks to well-defined data management, you can already reach great savings in your projects. 

Let’s see in the next post what else we can do to reduce Manufacturing Preparation Lead Time.