Thought Leadership

Digital Part Production addresses manufacturing complexity by connecting processes

This past April, we enjoyed introducing a new podcast series on Digital Part Production (DPP). If you missed the initial launch on this topic, we want to provide another opportunity to learn about this amazing technology. Digital Part Production is the process of having a fully connected digital thread, merging the digital world and the physical world to create a continuous digitalized communication process. This process also includes a feedback loop as an overarching mechanism to drive the highest possible production throughput and quality in parts manufacturing on the shop floor. 

>Listen to the podcast.

Bill Butcher
Bill Butcher, Senior Marketing Manager of Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment Industry at Siemens.

DPP’s first podcast in this series is an overview, with Bill Butcher, Senior Marketing Manager of Industrial Machinery at Siemens, interviewing Rahul Garg, Vice-president of the mid-market program at Siemens Digital Industries Software, and Frans Adamowicz, Solutions Director for Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment Industry at Siemens. They discuss why DPP is critical to developing new engineering practices that help keep pace with the growing complexity of new machine introductions.

Increasing complexity in manufacturing

One of the most significant challenges for machinery manufacturers is complexity. New machine introductions are increasingly growing in complexity for machine builders. The DPP process drives a reduction in time to delivery, connecting the entire production process, cutting data transfer rates duplication, improving collaboration and automating processes between engineering and manufacturing at the shop floor.

Rahul Garg
Rahul Garg, Vice-president, Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment of Siemens Digital Industries Software

Many companies have separate standalone automation solutions, but they don’t get the most valuable output if it’s not connected with one system – a significant challenge. As a result, there is endless automation on the shop floor that can hinder productivity. In addition, there’s no connectivity or associativity with the original design when you implement changes, creating a significant challenge. DPP combines various solutions connected in the Siemens portfolio to solve this problem.

There is also an ongoing issue of staying competitive in this market of growing complexity. Four key trends drive the need for adopting digitalization more comprehensively:

  1. Serving end-customer needs with personalization and highly customized equipment and machines. Personalization has an upstream effect on driving personalized machines.
  2. Smart machines are getting smarter, and it is essential to analyze and correct their behavior on the performance as the machine is operating.
  3. Hyper-automation drives changes in the overall shop floor where the machines are running. It is essential to have these machines interconnected to drive maximum effective throughput through the factories.
  4. The entire concept of digital and smart factories is driving more cross-equipment automation.

Global competition is fierce; therefore, all these trends lead to compressed lead times, increased part complexity and the need to have rigorous quality standards.

Frans Adamowicz
Frans Adamowicz, Solutions Director for Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment Industry at Siemens.

These requirements don’t go away but multiply and drive more complexity into the process of even simple part production.

Learn more in our DPP podcast series on Acast.

Software solutions

Siemens Digital Industries Software drives the transformation to enable a digital enterprise where engineering, manufacturing, and electronics design meet tomorrow with the Xcelerator™ portfolio. 

Xcelerator is a comprehensive, integrated portfolio of software, services and an application development platform, accelerating businesses’ transformation into digital enterprises. It unlocks a powerful industrial network effect – essential requirements to leverage complexity as a competitive advantage, no matter the industry or company, to seamlessly create tomorrow’s complex machines.

Related links:
Listen to DPP Podcast01 – 
an introduction to Digital Part Production
Listen to DPP Podcast02 – highly automated CAM
Listen to DPP Podcast03 – synchronized part production
Listen to DPP Podcast04 – benefits of additive manufacturing

About our experts:
Rahul Garg is the Vice President for Industrial Machinery & SMB Program, responsible for defining and delivering key strategic initiatives and solutions and global business development. He and his team are responsible for identifying key initiatives and developing solutions for the industry while working closely with industry leading customers and providing thought leadership on new and emerging issues faced by the machinery industry. Rahul’s experience and insight are derived from 25 year career delivering software-based solutions for product engineering and manufacturing innovation for the global manufacturing industry, spanning a career in R&D to program management, sales and P&L management and having focused exclusively on the industrial machinery and heavy equipment industry since 2007.

Frans Adamowicz is Solutions Director for Industrial Machinery, responsible for supporting the industry lead in delivering key strategic initiatives, solutions, and global business development. As part of the industry’s team, he’s responsible for identifying key initiatives and developing solutions for the industry while working closely with industry-leading customers and providing thought leadership on new and emerging issues faced by the machinery industry. Franz’s experience and insights are derived from a 35-year career of delivering software-based solutions for product engineering and manufacturing innovation for the global manufacturing industry. He has held leadership positions in multiple functional areas, including sales and services management, country and industry marketing management, having focused exclusively on the industrial equipment and machinery industry globally since 2007.

Bill Butcher is the Marketing Leader for the Industrial Machinery industry team and has over 20 years of experience within the manufacturing software and technology space. In Bill’s current role, he is responsible for delivering strategic marketing content, including campaign strategy, go to market messaging, and digital inbound content that communicates the value of the Siemens Digital Industry Software portfolio to the enterprise SMB and SAS channels.

Blake Snodgrass

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.stage.sw.siemens.com/thought-leadership/2021/07/15/digital-part-production-addresses-manufacturing-complexity-by-connecting-processes/