Digital Manufacturing

Digital Manufacturing is a subset of PLM that is an approach involving people,

process/practice and technology that uses PLM information to plan, engineer
and build the first instance of a product; ramp that product up for volume
production and produce, monitor and capture for other aspects of the lifecycle
the remaining instanced of that products production using the minimum amount
of resources possible.
As seen in the above definition digital manufacturing is much more than
computer technology. It includes the elements of PLM; process/practice, people
and technology. But it has more focus on technology that puts the digital into
digital manufacturing. People work differently in the environment comprising
of digital manufacturing. They might be very much a part of the approach in
building the first product, their involvement might vary considerably in building
the rest of them. In other operations people might figure very little whereas
machines and robots do the maximum of the job.
In the design function, people socially construct what is a good design;
engineers discuss and argue about what constitute the appropriate engineering
implementation. At the end of the assembly line, there is not much discussion
about what constitutes an acceptable product, it either meets the specification or
not. Once the product is planned and engineered and the first one is built, the
rest of the product needs to be built. Since the first product that is built rarely
meets the specification in terms of dimensions, tolerances etc..there is a time
gap that is called ramp-up where the issues are rectified and as soon as the
rectification is done, the rest of the products can be built. Digital manufacturing
taps in the info core of PLM model and draws out information from design and
engineering departments and feeds back information to help and validate the
design and feeds information forward towards how product was manufactured
to aid service and disposal.
Benefits of Digital Manufacturing:
There were a number of improvements in all stages of manufacturing,
manufacturing the first product; ramp up and consecutively in the
manufacturing of the rest of the products. The benefits are tabulated in the table
below
Benefit achieved
Reduction in search time for data
Reduction in the number of design changes
Better understanding of requirements
Shortened manufacturing planning process

Percentage
80%
65%
50%
40%

Reduction in the number of work stations

More optimized material flow
Reduction in time-to-market
Improved labour utilization
Reduction in tool design
Improvements from better plant layout
More quicker identification of areas of
improvement
Improved validation of process
Increase in collaboration/communication
Increase in product throughout
Overall reduction in production cost
Decrease in product design time

40%
35%
30%
30%
30%
25%
15%
15%
15%
15%
13%
10%

The above improvement percentages need to be viewed with a caution since the
study was not in scientific terms. It was difficult to say that whatever gains the
companies say by implementing digital manufacturing they are correct.
Manufacturing the first one, ramp up and manufacturing the rest:
The manufacturing function is simplified into above three stages. However, the
first product might not be final one which does go through a ramp-up stage.
This ramp-up stage also is not a well-defined one and goes back when the
production history is traced. Lastly, making the final product might not be
automated as the manufacturing improvements are being analysed and
implemented.
Manufacturing the first one: This is the stage where the first product is
manufactured. This a lot messier where the design stage ends and the
manufacturing stage begins. This is the stage where there could be a great
chance of wasted time, energy and material because as-built might be different
than as-designed. This stage where there is the intersection of the design and the
manufacturing is a critical stage where the product quality could be quite
questionable. This is because of the details of the product to be manufactured
the engineering team hands over the manufacturing team. There are companies
where the manufacturing engineers come to the design team, take all the
necessary details, go back to he manufacturing department and utilize only the
useful information and leave out the rest of the information that does not suit
their tooling. This could save a lot of wastage in terms of money, material and

energy in the whole organization. Digital manufacturing could tap into various
areas in a factory and eliminate all kinds of wastage in it. Some of the areas
include process planning and reuse that implies that the process engineers could
use the CAD drawings and the machines and see if a process is feasible and also
integrates the process planning from design and engineering into the
manufacturing area and makes manufacturing a partner in the process. Also the
factory flow simulation is the most important aspect taken care off by digital
manufacturing in the first stage of the product manufacture. Since the operations
taking place in the factory need to be well sequenced. This sequencing has an
overall impact on the efficiency of the organization as a whole.
Production ramp-up: The goal of digital manufacturing is to eliminate this
stage of product information process in real space. There have always been gaps
between simulation in virtual space and what happens in real space. Digital
manufacturing has the capability to reduce the wastage of time, energy, and
material during the ramp-up process. The ramp up time used to be a small part
of the manufacturing cycle when cycle times were small and sorted becoming
large with reduced cycle times. The idea of digital manufacturing is to reduce
the ramp timeto as low as possible.
It is seen by means of leaning curve the amount of wasted time, energy and
material during the ramp-up process. The learning curve is shown in the
following figure below

The triangular figure shown above demonstrates the cost wasted during the
ramp-up process. Digital manufacturing starts the virtual production at the top
of the learning curve and only starts physical production when learning curve
begins to end at the bottom. The ability for digital manufacturing to do the same
will depend on many factors e.g. for production process that are highly
automated with production operations that are well-defined and suitable for
simulation, the potential to drive down the experience or simulation is high.
Once the simulations show the required results, the instructions to produce them
can be downloaded into computers controlling the actual equipment. Apart from
the learning curves, manufacturing ramp-up is more accompanied by product
changes called as Engineering Change Orders (ECOs). These ECOs could occur
if any product does not have the functionality that the engineers anticipate or
issues with suppliers that enforce the replacement of one component with
another. All these issues do disrupt the experience curve as a whole. Digital
manufacturing tries to reduce the ECOs as much as possible so that all kinds of
inefficiencies could be eliminated to as low as possible. Digital manufacturing
by providing better communication and simulation in the first stage of the
manufacturing process would be further able to reduce the ECOs. As the ECOs
are reduced greatly, the hampering of the learning curve is lessoned to a great
degree.
Manufacturing the rest: Just as how digital manufacturing plays a vital role in
the manufacturing of the first product and also reduce the ramp-up time, it does
play a major rule in the manufacturing of the rest of the products. Since digital
manufacturing applications are a source of information that can be used to
replace wastage of time, energy and material as products flow through the
factory. Digital manufacturing has the information as to how the products have
to be manufactured and use the information to compare against the actual
production of the products and capture information about actual production for
use in other stages of the products life cycle.
Production planning
This is information developed to create factory flow simulation and analysis.
Rather than manually allocating equipment time and schedule production
activity, use of factory flow simulation allows production planners to use
discrete timing and flow information o efficiently allocate production and
simulate production to determine unnecessary equipment changeovers or other
production flow problems. In many to reduce any kind of wastage with respect

time, material or energy. Using models for factory flow simulation and analysis,
production planners can develop production plans and test those plans in
simulation. Also changes in the production schedules are better handled that can
cause a lot of problems for companies that dont use digital manufacturing.
Computer-aided on demand builds
Digital manufacturing can do more than repository of information. In the
information mirroring model, the information from the virtual space can be
provided to the real space. For humans to recall all the information would be a
tough job with respect to the sequencing of the parts or machine time. The time
required to retrieve information with respect to the bill of materials and
blueprints between products in unavailable in todays production facility. Using
the approach of digital manufacturing, the product being built would be in the
virtual space. It is simply a matter of getting that information to real space in a
form that eliminates wasted time, energy and material.
Quality control monitoring and audit
The quality control is never an issue in the virtual space since the specifications
met are assumed to be exact without any deviations. Real space is much more
difficult to assume that the quality would be perfect unlike virtual space. The
machines do not perform the operations with the same degree of precision each
time and humans also vary in reliability and competence in doing specific
operations. Inspecting mechanisms are devised. Using the concept of digital
manufacturing, the inspecting mechanism compares the quality of the product
that is being produced in the real space constantly that there in the virtual space.
Also the inspection of the product quality is not enough but providing an audit
trail. Any issue that arises with the product at a later date, then audit trail would
provide verification that the problem is not in the manufacturing.
As-built capture
This deals with the as-built information that exists in products just like humans
have DNA in them. In olden days the way we could extract this information by
disassembling the product, deduce and analyse the same for any defects. This
lead to a severe wastage of time, energy and material. The information used to
be extracted in various ways such as opening the product for repair, and then
service organization finds the part that is incorrect and orders a different part.
This process of ordering a part and replacing the inefficient one leads to wastage

of time, energy and material. Using digital manufacturing, the manufacturers

when they build the product know which instance had gone into the product and
where. The as-built information of the parts making up of the product is
captured and stored in a central repository. This as-built information is needed
not only in manufacturing but highly useful in other aspects of the products
lifecycle such as service and disposal.