A new online service will enable small and mid-sized engineering
firms to create digital simulations of their factories. It aims to
help companies identify production bottlenecks and win new business
from larger firms.
This is the thinking behind
Dassault Systemes
Delmia's (DSD) decision to make its V6
product lifecycle management software available both as a
standalone product and a service.
V6 allows firms to build a detailed digital model of their
factory. It captures machine and human activities and operating
parameters as well as work and materials flows, and builds an
animated simulation of a production line. Planners can zoom into
any aspect of the line to check tolerances and try
alternatives.
DSD's vice-president for R&D, Pascal Lecland, told Computer
Weekly large firms such as global auto and aircraft makers, the
company's traditional customers, would use V6 to simulate the
entire behaviour of their factories down to machine tool level.
Competitive pressures were making it important for the
assemblers to know what their suppliers' factories were capable of
making. Both sides could use V6 to colloborate to optimise factory
performance and to develop new products, he said.
Lecland said Dassault was very concerned to ensure that data
flows in V6 were secure.
"We are dealing with customers' intellectual property," he said.
"If we are going to offer V6 on a software as a service basis, we
have to address the security issue for customers."
V6 ties in with Dassault's
Catia computer aided design software and ERP packages such as
SAP, allowing companies to develop new products and the processes
to make them, simultaneously. This can cut months or years off the
time needed to bring a new product to market, Lecland said.
He added that the firm is working to develop a real time
feedback loop so manufacturing information from the factory floor
goes to the engineering and design departments for rapid changes to
improve the product's manufacturability.
"Our goal is 'right first time'," Lecland said, "but we realise
that no digital model will reflect shop floor reality from the
start. We believe simulation in a digital factory will reduce
drastically the number of trial production runs required to build
to high quality.
"This will get the product to market quicker and cheaper and let
the manufacturer introduce more variations faster."