Model-Based Product Development: Efficiency and Collaboration

00:00 First of all, I want to thank everybody. This must be a very important topic to you because it's like a three mile walk to get all the way over here. It's like unbelievable. You just keep going and like, where is room 210? See, it's unbelievable. But we're here. So thank you for coming. Secondly, I want to make sure I thank the Lixil team. You know, Anthony and Matt, like for those of you that are also presenting as customers, you know, the amount of work that goes into doing this. It is. It is. This is their story, right? It's your story. Okay. It's not my story, their story.

00:33 But the way this is going to work, I'm going to do a little bit of setup because I want to define for you what we mean by model based product development. These guys have been living it, and that's what I want you to hear about. So I'm going to spend a few minutes up front just defining what it means to be to be using model based product development in your everyday practices. And then we're going to hand off to Anthony and Matt to do the rest of it. Okay? So we may or may not have time for Q&A at the end. Don't know. We've not run through this from the beginning to the end in one section.

01:03 We've done it in pieces. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. All right. So I'm going to get started and we will we will take it. We will take it from the top right now. All right. Thanks, guys. All right. So what in the world is model based product development? I'm going to start out with that definition, as I described, and then we'll get into Lexell's story here. Okay. So first of all, hopefully you recognize that I recognize model based definition and model based enterprise are real terms that the industry uses.

01:33 They are defined and I'm not going to read them to you. I just want to make sure you understood that I knew this. We are making up a new term here. There's a reason for that. Oh, they told me not to wander too much. All right, I'm going to stay here. There's a reason for that. But. These are terms that have been around for a long time. And many of you in the audience are heading down this path. This is actually an important context for this discussion. But we are defining a new term, model based product development. What does that all mean? I put it in between the two

02:04 because that's actually technically where it sits in my mind. Okay. I'll be curious to hear your feedback starting out with first, why model based? These are related and actually dependent. So starting out with model based definition, the truth is out there. If you talk to enough customers, there have been enough pilot projects, enough customers going down this path, the value is real. So this is real data from real customer pilot projects. Working in the model based world, there is real opportunity to drive significant business value,

02:34 non reducing of non-conformances, improving production times, improving documentation times. It's often thought that model based means doing your 3D documentation exactly the same way you do your 2D documentation. That's actually not the way you should do it. You can you can do it differently in three D because it is in three D and that's where the value and the savings can come from. So there is a lot of value to be gained in going model based across the enterprise and we're really excited about where the technology is today.

03:06 Now those of you that have been digging into this deep, you know, we're still not perfect. We still have work to do to support model based initiatives. But with Creo, we're in a pretty good place, and particularly with the way Creo and Windchill work together, we're in a pretty good place. So speaking for the Creo side of the of the house, because that's what I do here at PTC. Hopefully you realize that after seeing today's keynote, I should have introduced myself anyway. Look at the core of it creating GTA in the model that's semantically correct according to the standards is

03:38 an important part of creating GTA properly for sharing in the enterprise. And that is for sure what we've been focused on with our partners. Sigmetrics deeply integrated into Creo. So in Creo you can author GTA according to the standards, you can even be guided through the process. In addition to that, we will tell you which geometry in the model is fully constrained if you're using the tool the right way so you know when you're done. So this world of having a 2D drawing off to manufacturing, that is incomplete because you miss something. You could you could actually eliminate that by doing everything in 3D because

04:10 the GTA advisor technology built into Creo from our partners at Sigmetrics actually tracks to make sure all the geometry is constrained. It's semantically correct. We know what geometry constraining, we know when you're done. In addition to that, obviously there's the opportunity to share this information with its semantic definition throughout the enterprise so it can be reused elsewhere in the company, particularly in manufacturing. And let's be honest, this is where these initiatives oftentimes you have challenges, right? Because the whole reason why the industry has been focused on 2D is

04:42 because there's an entire ecosystem out there that has to be able to consume the 3D content to make use of it downstream. But nonetheless, it is happening. It is real, and customers are getting benefit from the model based world. But the fact of the matter is that there are still challenges. So this is where we are today with model based product development. I want to make I'm sorry, with model based definition and model based enterprise, I want to introduce to you what we mean by model based product development. And what I love about Lixil story. You guys are still doing everything with 2D drawings, right? Wow. What kind of a plot twist is that?

05:13 They're doing everything with 2D drawings and here I am talking about model based. Ha! This is why we're here. Okay, So look for for decades, for decades, people have been making beautiful 3D CAD models in Pro engineer and now in Creo and they've been doing it simply to create derivative 2D artifacts. Okay, I got a little secret story to tell you. The original version of Pro Engineer did not have a 2D environment. We were going to change the world. Everything was going to be 3D until we realized that everything in

05:44 the industrial world was driven off of 2D and we had no choice. But we did at least do the smart thing to make the 2D environment derivative of the 3D environment right. It is dependent and derivative of the 3D environment. That is important. Of course, the initiative to go model based is to stop doing those 2D drawings and rely everything on the annotated 3D model. This is where we are today. Customers are doing this. I just talked about the value of all that. Where does this model based product development thing come into play? Well, interestingly, you heard Jim today at the keynote talk about the fact that

06:15 the Creo business is really, really doing well. One of the things that we're noticing is as customers get interested in this model based trend in the marketplace, they want to get all the value that I talked about on the previous slide. What they realize is if we're going to make the commitment as a company to be fully model based all the way out into manufacturing and service, why don't we take a look at what it is we're doing in the core product development process and rethink some of the maybe at

06:46 the right time correct decisions we made? To use technology as part of the product development process that was not truly integrated into the CAD tool. So what I'm talking about here are things like simulation. Well, maybe if you made the decision to use simulation from somebody else ten years ago, it's because we weren't competitive. Well, today we have world class simulation integrated into Creo with Ansys. So why would you leave the CAD environment to do simulation when you can do it right there on the Creo model directly and not break the digital thread?

07:17 How about NC toolpaths? Well, I would challenge you to take a look at what you can do with Creo NC today. I'm talking like multi spindle synchronization five axis stuff like it is very sophisticated what you can do with Creo NC today, but maybe 510 years ago you made a decision to use something else and every time you do that it could go down the list, right? Things like service instructions, things like tool design. Every time you make the decision to use a tool that's not embedded in Creo, you break the digital thread, you create this context,

07:49 switching sort of mental problem and you slow the process down. Okay, You cannot progress changes through the system in a way that works. And this is what we mean by model based product development. And it's it's kind of just like the original, the original message of pro engineer back in the days that everything is fully associative and carries throughout. And what's happened is just being honest. We at PTC, we didn't progress some of these capabilities as well as we should have. And you all made decisions that you had to make to get the job done.

08:21 And I'm telling you, one of the things that's driving a lot of growth for us is people are rethinking those decisions, doing more and more inside Creo with us and getting some of the benefits that you are going to hear about from the Lixil team. Okay, They are driving everything. The good news is you can do this without being committed to model based enterprise. Which is amazing and you can get tremendous, tremendous value from it. So that is where I leave you today. I'm going to hand it off to Anthony

08:51 and you're going to see what we have to say here. It's going to be really, really great. Go for it. Anthony. Probably want to turn my mic off because I'm going to. Thank you, Brian. All right. So I'll start off by introducing myself. I'm Anthony Esposito. I'm the leader of R&D for the Americas business at Lixil. This is Matt Koons. Yep. I. Also leader of product development for Lixil for. All of our fixtures, products, toilets, bathtubs and sinks, those things that we all use every day.

09:22 So Lixil is our parent company, Japanese company, and we have about 55,000 employees worldwide, 15 product lines worldwide. But here in the US, some that you might be known familiar with is Grohe, Dkv, Inax and American Standard of probably probably the most familiar to, like Matt said, we we were designing toilets, we're designing tubs and faucets and vanities all of your bathroom, kitchen fixtures. And as we go through our product development process,

09:54 we're really looking at over the historical view that we've been looking in the past 5 to 10 years. How can we improve our process? Everyone's name that they want to really focus on is speed to market. And as we look back, we made a lot of decisions, as Brian mentioned in the past, of we're using different tools and different softwares because they weren't all available at the time. But when you actually look back and and you look at how much time am I losing when I take that file out, it really allowed us to to step back

10:25 and say we need to start changing what we're doing. If we want speed to market, we really got to be able to keep that file in 3D within the Creo software as much as possible. We don't do it for everything. We do it for the majority. We start all the way at our industrial design level and we move all the way through to technical design, simulation and tool design. CXC But in the past it was dumped over the fence. So by being able to keep that file within words, within the system, we've embraced this use this 3D model, but also work concurrently.

10:58 So the combination of the two has really allowed us to move quick to break down the walls of who owns the data. How many times am I taking that data transfer out of the system and putting it back and who owns it? Where does it belong? How am I losing data? Am I working on the latest version? Manual processes. Right. The real name of the game is eliminate those manual processes and and really try to keep the file in Creo as as as much as we can.

11:28 So I'll let Matt take over how we're actually doing this at Lixil. Thanks, Anthony. So after we looked at all of our our problems, right, what was driving our inefficiencies, we took the step back to say, you know, how do we try and streamline this? And our vision within it was our three D model, right? Our three D model needs to be our source of truth between all of the different departments and how we're trying to develop product. So we right now we're able to bring in five different key elements of our product

12:03 development process, and we start with our industrial design. So we have an industrial design team separate from our R&D team who kind of dictates some of the functionality that they're looking for and the cosmetics of the piece. And they are parametrically driving this in Creo today. We can then Parametrically link everything from the industrial design team into our technical design. So now we're trying to look at the the structure and how it needs to be built, design for manufacturing and we're keeping the linkages between

12:35 the two different phases there. From there, we're using the internal Creo Ansys simulation tools so that we can do rapid iterations like look at our loading conditions. Are we seeing high stress points all still living within the same system? And then we start blending into our tool design. So now we're really looking at manufacturing. We start developing and designing our tools. That's still parametrically linked with our finished part that we want to try and get out into the manufacturing plant.

13:05 So if we need to be making changes, we understand that it's going to have a direct impact on the tool design. And then finally we actually go into the physical world transformation and we are using the CNC programing tools within Creo to drive and start cutting some of our models. So this is a foam block cut out of what we expect to do for a casting process and we can run these through right off of our tool design and everything is connected all the way around that circle. So why is this valuable?

13:35 Right? So this is what I think the key question is, and I'm not going to try and sugarcoat this by any means, it's time. That's the reason why we look to do this, is we're being asked from our organizations and our consumers and everything is that they want more products faster to the market. And we looked back and said we have to cut back on our development process. Time There's so much of trying to hand off and this process has reduced the amount of handoffs and everything that we got. So we had about five bullet points that we have.

14:06 There's definitely more that we could be looking to add into that. But just to focus on one aspect, just the industrial design, the technical design process has saved us over two months on average within an Ncpdp project in the way that we looked at it is our industrial design team. They're doing all of this 3D CAD work, which is extremely valuable to the R&D team. So why would we stop that and make us redo it all over again? Let's utilize the work that they've done within the other part of the organization

14:39 and make sure that it's linked together in two months within an MPD project that might have an average of 12 to 18 months total. Right. Is a huge improvement to try and get to market faster. And of course, we're going to continue to look to say we've got these five bullet points. At what point can we try and get to the six bullet point, what to the seventh bullet point and continue to expand and grow and grow within our journey of trying to get to this model based product development feature. So a couple other things, right?

15:09 Just a quick bullet points here as we're trying to save months worth of time, right? We've already went through that. The biggest aspect is we're reducing our software transfers. We're not starting in one 3D modeling program that the ID team wants to use and then transferring and redoing everything back into Creo. We're eliminating the duplication of data. No longer are we downloading step files and transferring that to some other system. We're staying within the same ecosystem within Creo our data stays controlled, right Every time you have to go to a step file, you've lost control of that file.

15:40 Somebody might manipulate it and make a change for their process. And you don't have the connection of your data anymore. And we really get real time product analysis and we reduce our design iterations. So if we need to make a change from a tooling side, but it's going to have an impact on the cosmetic and the ID, we can get those two parties together and quickly make that change in real time. So what we might say could take you three, 4 or 5 days a week. We can now do in 20 minutes by having everything connected together.

16:10 And that's really where how we can push all of that stuff simultaneously because we're parametrically linked all within the same ecosystem. Then one change can push all the way down to the other. We know all of our affected data and we're not trying to look for it within all the different softwares. And I think Matt Matt touched on one thing that's important. This is not a one way street. It. Doesn't start in the beginning and just go to the end. It's back and forth. You know, the example Matt used is, you know, we have real time issues.

16:40 We get past the technical design, we go into manufacturing, we start making some parts and we realize we have to make changes. We don't have to go backwards and just throw it back over the fence to our industrial design team. If it impacts them. We actually get in a room and we work on the release file together through a change notice and make that change together. And within an hour we're able to push it right back upstream through whatever process it needs to to implement that change. So that's really where that the benefits coming of working together through one 3D

17:12 file. Absolutely. So we're we're really not done. So Brian already called us out. We definitely use 2D drawings at every single stage here at this process. So it's definitely something that we would love to try and get rid of, right? But some people just want to have that paper document to say, we've all signed off on it. So there's definitely some rooms there for us to get better. We also want to get into more parts of our business, our customer care teams and our quality teams, right? They're still relying on those 2D documents, the spec pages,

17:45 to try and understand what's the dimension from here to here. We didn't call it out. Well, now we can give them potentially give them the access to all this stuff and get that feedback. We have way more opportunity just within the CAD cam within our production, right? We we're using it one element on full design, but we might not be for a CNC program where it cuts the final part when we're actually in production. So those are some areas that we want to get into product assembly instructions, any of those things, right? We should be able to start driving them again.

18:15 We're utilizing the 2D, the 2D documentation, which is where we're still finding our biggest opportunities to keep adding those bullet points on that on that circular system. And I'll just add that while we do this in the Americas and we're pretty successful, other parts of our business globally don't do it. So it's a huge opportunity to to leverage what we're doing here and try and get, you know, the biggest one was the industrial design team, right? We see that as the biggest value added. So we're trying to take our success and our story even within our own business

18:48 and try and replicate it in other parts of the business, because as again, we're trying to get save time and really try to get to get to market quicker, that that to us seems one of the biggest hurdles to get over. But one of the biggest advantages that we can drive through our business. I want to thank the Lixil team. It's a lot of work to prepare for this kind of thing. Appreciate it. Thank you. Really amazing.