Podcast series: Smart manufacturing (Part 3) – parts manufacturing

Industrial machinery in manufacturing is witnessing astounding technological advancements based on smart manufacturing. However, with dynamic changes comes challenging steps to validating and managing modern manufacturing and assembly operations for achieving high-level quality while optimizing cost.

The third podcast of this series on Smart Manufacturing by Siemens Digital Industries Software, solutions for the industrial machinery industry by Siemens Digital Industries Software, is telling us how machine manufacturers are implementing smart manufacturing to improve the product of parts manufacturing.

We are learning the advantages that smart manufacturing brings to industrial machinery manufacturers. Also, we’re inspecting the improvements that smart manufacturing provides to manufacturing execution management, with discussions on the manufacturing of both the bill of process and bill of materials.

We welcome again our expert in this podcast series, Bill Davis, Director of Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment Solutions at Siemens, whose engineering expertise spans over 30-years.

Additive manufacturing – a combined, comprehensive approach

Our discussion begins with a differentiator to smart manufacturing and additive solutions.

A learning approach solidifies what is a dynamic process for improving the philosophy of additive manufacturing. It’s a collaborative relationship with engineers and manufacturers to create a feedback loop of information that’s forward-looking.

Siemens follows this communicative flow so that manufacturers are continually seeking ways to take advantage of the latest innovative thinking. This methodology aims to profit from every aspect of the manufacturing process.

Manufacturing – low volume, highly complex

There are various scales of volume. So, when building PLCs, HMIs or motor controllers, there’s enormous bulk, and every second becomes an opportunity for saving money. Therefore, by having an operations control management execution or manufacturing execution management tool, it provides fine-grain analysis to assist in driving value into the manufacturing process.

So, manufacturing machinery, along with viewing the assembly, results in a detailed analysis which feeds information back into the engineering space to provide closed-loop, continuous improvement.

Bill of process and quality

Another piece of this process includes the bill of process or the directions for building a machine. There’s a methodology to building each part and rolling that part manufacturing up into optimizing the assembly process. This results in capturing what can be implemented into the schedule, while the assembly set-up is good-to-go for processing it.

Moreover, quality is integral to every process. To ensure quality requirements, all machine and fabricated parts must accommodate the conditions of the machine shop. It’s vital to use this information to qualify all methods for creating the part correctly. Also, there are crucial factors in using the appropriate machine, evaluating the sequence scheduling and incorporating flexibility into the process.

Benefits of smart manufacturing

Collaborative knowledge with a forward-thinking, innovative mindset serves to promote premium quality of product smart manufacturing while optimizing cost. This learning approach creates a competitive edge for solution providers to have an end-to-end solution, from manufacturing and design to service and back into the business system.

To learn more from our expert, listen to this engaging podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Castbox, TuneIn, Google and RSS Feed. 

Listen to podcast01, podcast02 and podcast04.

About the author:
Bill Davis is the acting Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment Industry leader for Siemens Digital Industries. His experience and insights have been acquired from a career spanning 30 years in engineering and operations management with machinery and heavy equipment companies.  Bill holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from Marquette University, with a concentration in Operations Management and Strategic Marketing, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Milwaukee School of Engineering.