Smart manufacturing and uncovering Closed-Loop Manufacturing – Summary ep. 3
Some daunting challenges are occurring for companies in the manufacturing industry where companies need to enhance flexibility for customers who desire individualized products for the same prices as mass-produced products while increasing quality and efficiency.
In a recent podcast, Rahul Garg, Vice-president of Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment at Siemens Digital Industries Software, discusses how Closed-Loop Manufacturing (CLM) enables firms to synchronize and optimize production across product design, production planning, manufacturing execution and automation. It creates a collaborative and connected information loop for CLM to constantly improve the manufacturing process’s cost, time and quality. This process further accelerates the delivery of products at an optimal level of quality and cost. In addition, CLM strengthens the alignment of as-planned products, as-built, and as-used product information into a continuous iterative enhancement process.
Also, CLM addresses the challenges of the reverse flow of information, ensuring that engineering teams receive timely feedback to improve product evolution value and accelerate problem resolution. CLM manages new product manufacturing introduction, speeds up time-to-market, and maintains quality reliability and compliance requirements.
Closed-Loop Manufacturing processes include some of the following steps:
- Manufacturing planning and engineering to determine the sequence of steps to build the products
- Customer requirements are paired against the schedule of the resources available, implementing enterprise resource planning and scheduling capabilities to determine how the products will get created.
- Dependent upon the supply chain for parts and materials to ensure the maximization, reuse and utilization of resources.
When a customer order arrives, it’s usually captured in a standard ERP system. The ERP or CRM captures the customer needs, while the PLM systems show the details of what needs to be manufactured and how to manufacture it.
The steps to assembling the product for the manufacturing operations process include how it’s tracked and built. Therefore, the ability to capture and track that information becomes crucial. The CLM contains three essential ingredients:
- ERP systems capture the order information and help with the supply chain and logistics.
- PLM systems define the product, assisting manufacturing process definition to the various resources utilized.
- Manufacturing Operations Management and MOM capabilities effectively combine the virtual world of PLM and real-world production. A MOM system is an evolutionary upgrade over traditional MES systems encompassing quality management, advanced planning and scheduling, manufacturing execution and enterprise manufacturing intelligence.
Furthermore, the supply chain plays a critical role in manufacturing to enable product completion. Therefore, efficient collaboration with the suppliers and customers for a more straightforward process is essential, ensuring that new ideas have been tested and applied and that suppliers deliver the product capabilities within the timeline to the quality specifications. All these guarantee the completion and delivery of assured schedules.
Manufacturing occurs in the physical world. The rise of MOM on the factory floor allows a manufacturer to collect and maintain large amounts of data on production via physical products. Previously, this data was collected manually: billing information (a paper-driven process) is now digital; collected by a variety of physical sensing technologies, including programmable logic controllers, PLCs, sensors, gauges and IoT devices.
This real-time data collection is valuable for understanding what’s continuously occurring in the production process. Also, that data feeds into the virtual world while the design, engineering, or manufacturing engineering people put together the overall processes.
Learn more in the podcast.
Xcelerator, the comprehensive and integrated portfolio of software and services from Siemens Digital Industries Software, helps companies of all sizes create and leverage a comprehensive digital twin that provides organizations with new insights, opportunities and levels of automation to drive innovation.
For more information on Siemens Digital Industries Software products and services, visit siemens.com/software or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Siemens Digital Industries Software – where today meets tomorrow.
Related links:
Smart Manufacturing podcast 01 – Uncovering Smart Manufacturing
Smart Manufacturing podcast 02 – The Convergence of IT and OT in Digitalized Manufacturing
Smart Manufacturing podcast 03 – Uncovering Closed-Loop Manufacturing
