Get the most value from your investment in innovation by enabling better re-use of proven components, assemblies and equipment

We all do it. We understand it is happening and allow it to go on usually because we’re not ready to change. It’s manifest in the everyday rituals we repeat from the time we get up in the morning, until we retire. Every human on the planet is guilty of repeating painfully inefficient and repetitive processes. So why should it be any different for small- to medium-size businesses (SMBs) working to create new products?

In the rush to beat the competition to market with new products, most SMBs have not taken the time to fix broken processes that hamper them from achieving their strategic objectives. Purdue University researchers have uncovered just how serious the problem is.

Many engineers are forced to re-invent the wheel every time they build a new product or component because they lack the ability to reapply company innovations in product design environments. Design team members must huddle up to trade information that really should be waiting at their fingertips. Even the simplest of inefficient processes, like searching for files, can dramatically slow innovation. What are some of the basic reasons why is this happening?

Industry analysts say that the majority of SMBs still rely on paper-based processes. Eighty percent have no process or workflow automation and instead, rely on Excel and e-mail to manage data. The biggest problem with relying on such outdated processes is that it brings innovation to a screeching halt. In the meantime, OEMs can become impatient and even end up taking their business elsewhere.

Since the pressure is greater than ever to get new products to market faster, OEMs are requiring SMBs to respond more rapidly to RFPs. Designs must be right the first time and, even if they are right, OEMs could ask for major changes and demand a new design virtually overnight.

Then there are the perplexing regulatory compliance issues that continue to increase on a global scale. These add considerable risk to innovation, because vital business can be lost if just one component of a product is found to be non-compliant.

There have been many good reasons why SMBs have resisted making the investment necessary to stop reinventing the wheel and release the full power of their creative teams. Many SMBs have been reluctant to implement solutions that have had a reputation for being expensive and complex. But all that is changing quickly.

SMBs who want to be the best in their class – the true innovators – are turning to product lifecycle management, or PLM, solutions to gain the most value from their investments in innovation. The reason: PLM facilitates everything involved in innovation – the one area that can make or break a business.

PLM solutions can streamline the innovation process through the re-use of proven components, assemblies, equipment and processes. They also enable companies to create communized product platforms that establish the core product components, parts and related processes. These can then easily be modified to create all-new products, reducing product development time, ensuring first-time quality and lowering costs.

Case in point: Pre-defined assembly models speed new machine development

Bavaria-based manufacturer Brückner Maschinenbau GmbH designs and manufactures very large stretching machines that form the plastic wrap used to package thousands of products. It needed the ability to develop new machines more quickly by leveraging existing designs and knowledge. After investigating several solutions that might help, it decided to adopt a package from Siemens PLM Software.

“In the past we had to create new assemblies when there were five percent new or changed parts,” said Fritz Holzner, a Brückner engineer who acts as liaison between the company’s IT and engineering departments. “Today we manage all configurations within a master assembly that also contains the intelligence about how the parts interact.”

Brückner’s machines are arrangements of ten basic subassemblies. It was able to model all of these, making the process of configuring a machine for a new application simply a matter of replacing certain parts within the various subassemblies.

The Business Opportunity

Since SMBs are increasingly being asked to do more with less, it’s vital that they learn how not to re-invent the wheel and that they find ways to commonize key products and processes in the most efficient manner possible. By combining commonization with an automated system for re-using proven components, assemblies, equipment and processes, SMBs can avoid wasting precious resources. More importantly, they can energize and inspire their people who keep the organization innovative in the first place.

Re-use helps improve quality and bring products to market faster with fewer recalls. It allows parts libraries to be quickly searched by engineers, enabling them to make minor changes as needed to fit new product designs. These new designs can then be automatically tested for manufacturability, quality and other key requirements early in the design process. This can save millions of dollars that might otherwise be invested in faulty designs that end up on the scrap heap.

As new products or components are created, the re-use of proven designs increases efficiency and fosters best practices. Engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, sourcing, marketing and support all become part of a winning team when best practices are standardized through a commonization and re-use initiative.

How PLM Can Help

Product lifecycle management, or PLM, is an integrated, information-driven approach to managing product-related processes and data that enables people who need access to information to find exactly what they need. A new class of PLM solution from Siemens PLM Software is designed specifically to get SMBs up and running quickly and to help employees learn more efficient processes on the fly.

Now that ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions are available, PLM is the best option for SMBs that want to leverage communization and re-use practices drive innovation. Here’s just a short list of what a communization and re-use initiative can accomplish:

• Institutionalize efficient and repetitive processes
• Achieve more innovation cycles through process efficiency
• Access and utilize existing parts and assemblies from within the global value chain
• Leverage existing parts in multiple products to reduce development and parts costs
• Eliminate validation activities by utilizing previously certified parts

Finding the right technology, however, is not enough. SMBs must partner with a solution provider with deep roots in manufacturing and PLM. Drawing on its proven track record in many industries, Siemens PLM Software has packaged easy to-deploy, easy-to-use applications focused on the needs of SMBs that want to leverage communization and re-use practices. These modular yet integrated solutions don’t require a heavy-duty IT infrastructure. They incorporate pre-defined best practices and provide data management capabilities that make it easier to find re-usable parts and automate repeatable processes. Since Siemens PLM Software PLM solutions are built on open standards, costs are kept to a minimum and the right functionality to run the business is available from the start. They feature an open, scalable platform that enables SMBs to extend the reach of their systems in cost-effective stages.

Read the next article in this series: X-Ray Vision