IEN: What are the major concerns facing providers of automation technology and related products and services in the next few years?
Livne: Technology vendors are faced with a number of critical challenges, coming from manufacturers in all industries -- including automotive and aerospace, electronics and consumer goods, machinery and other discrete manufacturing arenas.
Foremost among these challenges are:
- Getting more product to market faster, to meet growing and ever-changing competitive pressures and customer demands.
- Increasing globalization of the enterprise, as demonstrated by the proliferation of geographically dispersed manufacturing and distribution sites -- including outside vendors, service providers, contract manufacturers and suppliers.
- Controlling costs at all stages of the product life cycle -- from design through manufacture and assembly, to distribution.
- Optimizing production execution by enabling the retention and re-use of best practices and resources -- as well as enhancing communication and collaboration between design engineering and the shop floor, and reliable tracking and management of shop floor processes.
- All while achieving and maintaining consistently high levels of quality -- in the processes involved throughout the product life cycle, as well as in the finished product itself.
Growing competition, and the introduction of new technologies that help shorten design and production times, are placing enormous pressures on manufacturers to ramp up to full production volume faster, and get their products to market much more quickly than ever before.
In the automotive industry, for example, it can take as much as 12 to 18 months to reach desired production throughput levels. All of the leading automotive manufacturers agree: that is simply too long. Thus, they are looking for new methodologies and smarter software to help shave months off that cycle. Some have already achieved that, rolling some of their newer models off the production line at full volume in a fraction of the time once required.
But compressing production cycles brings its own challenges. There is less time to identify and rectify errors and design flaws, less time to make changes to meet market and competitive demands, less time to introduce new processes to dispersed production facilities, etc. The earlier these variables can be fixed or compensated for, the less cost impact they will have on the overall operation. Implementing strategies and processes that can manage these compressed and increasingly complex production operations is key.
Changes are driven by any number of factors -- many are intentional, such as adjusting a product''s assembly process to accommodate a newly designed or added part. But a lot of changes -- frequently the costlier ones -- are unpredictable and virtually impossible to avoid. However, many of these changes can be eliminated or significantly reduced, with early virtual verification (simulation) of product design, production, assembly, and processes. For example, one Japanese automotive manufacturer has reported that every one of the problems identified during production ramp-up could have been avoided if they had used digital verification, or simulation, techniques at the beginning of their production cycle.
In addition, the need to get more products to market faster has led growing numbers of manufacturers to distribute their production operations among several sites and plants, and to involve more and more contract manufacturers and suppliers in the design and production chain --resulting in operations dispersed through many countries. This has given rise to the need for "plan anywhere, build anywhere" strategies, which in turn drive the need for technologies and methodologies that allow the manufacturer to manage information effectively, maximize the effectiveness of product simulation, and fully optimize the execution of their manufacturing processes -- from initial production, through all aspects of the shop-floor environment.
Adding to the globalization challenge is the fact that extended enterprises must now contend with a wide range of platforms -- both hardware and software -- on which their products must be made. Add to this a rich diversity of work processes, shop floor layouts, and even work cultures, and the challenges of globalization increase exponentially. Integrating information and processes across these platforms and shop floor environments is critical, in order to keep the production process from slowing.
Achieving these goals -- faster time to volume and market, managing processes spread over dispersed locations, maintaining oversight within an extended enterprise that includes outside vendors and suppliers, controlling costs throughout the production life cycle, maintaining high levels of product and process quality, and optimizing production execution -- is imperative if a manufacturer is to hold onto its competitive position.
IEN: What about the Internet?
Livne: The Internet has created a new paradigm for manufacturers, shortening the distance between customer and supplier to the click of a mouse. In some cases, customers are configuring their own products, and business success depends on fulfilling these one-off orders and delivering them quickly. Electronic business has fed the growth of globalization and outsourcing for manufacturers, who must now manage global supply chains that comprise dispersed plants, contractors, and suppliers as a single virtual enterprise. Thus, every new product introduction requires collaboration between partners and suppliers to obtain full-volume production as quickly as possible. In addition, the smooth, efficient transfer of manufacturing processes from one site to another ensures consistency and reuse of crucial processes.
This changing face of electronic business has led to a new generation in manufacturing automation, moving beyond the traditional PDM, CAD and other legacy systems -- representing "what" is being designed and produced -- which were never very effectively linked to "where and when" the product would actually be produced.
Manufacturing Process Management (MPM) is a strategy that manufacturers have been increasingly adopting in recent years. MPM harnesses the Internet to create a globally collaborative environment that comprises all the technologies and methodologies for collaborative development and management of manufacturing process information, much as traditional methodologies help manage product information.
IEN: Will collaborative manufacturing play a role?
Livne: MPM addresses a crucial area of manufacturing that has historically been the most neglected of the industrial process -- the actual planning and creation of the manufacturing process. By creating and fostering a highly collaborative, enterprise-wide design and manufacture environment, MPM becomes a critical part of any manufacturer''s product life cycle management (PLM) strategy. MPM addresses the globalization challenge by integrating manufacturing information onto a single system -- one that effectively links product design systems that address "what" has to be produced (the electronic bill of materials traditionally handled by CAD and PDM systems), with shop-floor execution systems that address the "when and where," handled by manufacturing execution systems (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP).