An interesting story about Design to Manufacturing strategies from Desktop Engineering by Tom Kevan. This topic is very important, in my view. Design and Manufacturing are two separated places in the organization that very often fails to integrate their activities. This connection can allow to optimize product development and think towards manufacturing optimization already in the beginning of the design process.
Tom is discussing this topic with all top PLM players- Dassault Systems, Siemens PLM and PTC. The topic called “Single Source Of Data” made me think about potential fall backs in the implementation.
“The single source contains more than the MPM,” says Tom Hoffman, a director of Tecnomatix for Siemens PLM Software. “The single source is really the core for everything. MPM happens to be a layer that is tied to that single source of data. Manufacturing process management bridges the gap and ties product data to process data. So you are looking at product, process, plants, and resources and the interactions among them. They are all linked to the single source of data.”
If “Single Source” is the fundamental part of Design To Manufacturing strategies, reconnection may only happen if a whole product line can be provided by a single vendor. In my view, the reality of engineering and manufacturing is different. R&D and Manufacturing are not always aligned in terms of software packages. What will be the architecture and solution for such a type of customers? On the other side, if a whole product suite already provided by a single vendor, everything need to be already connected… A very interesting set of questions, in my view…
Best, Oleg
