Extending PLM into manufacturing
Exponential growth in customer-driven product configurations requires manufacturers to find more flexible ways of production. Combine that with supply chain interruptions, evolving safety regulations, and time to market pressures and the challenges can be daunting.
Manufacturing process management (MPM) provides the tools and methodologies for today’s dynamic plant-specific manufacturing environments, all coordinated through PLM. MPM brings together the shop floor with engineering, suppliers, logistics, and quality for a more connected and agile enterprise.
Reducing time for industrial ramp-up with manufacturing process management
Simply designing the best product is not enough. You need to launch it without delays if you hope to maintain a competitive advantage. A slower than desired ramp up of production capacity can lead to lost sales, while inherent issues in quality can damage brand reputation.
With a single source of truth to product data as the basis for MPM, associativity, traceability, change control, and security are all created, then automated for concurrent engineering and manufacturing. Planners will have greater confidence in such data and benefit from fewer errors in their manual processes.
Companies can accelerate time to manufacturing, ensuring that small changes in engineering don’t have a large impact on production. Watch the video to see how Polaris deployed MPM.
Manufacturing process management: The right data at the right time
The manufacturing bill of material (MBOM) is the key to how the manufacturing process runs. It is where you anchor your product configuration rules and introduce new materials. From the MBOM, manufacturing process management allows you to see how your product is assembled. With PTC's MPM capabilities, data gathered from the shop floor can be looped back for greater process efficiencies. Technical work instructions are then made available to the end user on-demand, whether on a screen or with AR, for faster and more accurate execution.
Get started with understanding manufacturing engineering in windchill
Manufacturing engineering is a critical aspect of any successful product launch. However, the time-intensive nature of preparing for production and keeping product data up to date across various configurations, design centers, and manufacturing plants is a complex issue.
This guide provides an in-depth look at common challenges manufacturing engineers face and how those can be effectively addressed to enable design anywhere, manufacture anywhere, and service everywhere.
Key product features
Leverage and integrate digital product design information into manufacturing process management.
Bi-directional associative EBOM to MBOM: Leverage 3D data and structured meta-data for BOM transformation with systematic traceability (equivalent links) and reconciliation between related BOMs
Plant master data management: Create plant specific MBOM structures including different views, part numbers, branches, and plant specific information
Validation: Validate the time, cost and feasibility of defined processes prior to sharing with the shop floor
Integrated change management: Streamlined reconciliation of product design changes into process planning
Process plans and resource management: Define plant-specific process plans with multiple sequences of operations and resource libraries (i.e. plants, work centers, tooling, skills, process materials)
Visual work instructions: Dynamically generate work instructions with in-context visuals (documents, digital, and AR)
Exchange with other systems: Integrate manufacturing processes and deliverables to downstream ERP/MRP teams.
Digital quality: Define and allocate 3D control characteristics to process plan operations; define non-geometrical control characteristics and libraries of standard control characteristics; integrate quality processes (i.e. PFMEA)
Factory digital twin: Represent smart factory as an input to defining your process plan
3D visualization: Creo View for manufacturing process management can read information from manufacturing product structure
Customer stories
See how your peers are utilizing better MPM across their organizations.
Streamlining success through integrated enterprise solutions
Learn how integrating PLM, ERP, and MES can improve collaboration and enhance your product development processes.
Windchill: PTC’s platform for manufacturing process management
PTC's Windchill is a leading PLM application helping dispersed engineering and manufacturing teams stay on the same page. The solution is a pillar of the digital thread, serving as a single source of truth for stakeholders—internal or external—at all stages of process management.
One of the biggest manufacturing process management challenges faced during manufacturing process management is ensuring access to the most up-to-date configurations and product information. For manufacturing, this information is then used in the automatic creation of MBOMs, process plans, and work instructions.