Manufacturers are living the pressures of cost and time reduction. Cost reduction is critical to your success in a business. Time reduction is strategic to your ability to provide program deliverables in timeframes that carry penalties for slippage and lost work. Lack of control in the design and manufacturing process of some manufacturers allow engineers and designers to create more parts than needed, thus wasting precious time, increasing costs, and impacting quality. Designing the optimum number of parts possible for all your product programs is a desirable Commonization and Re-use goal.

Whether your company is just starting to define a re-use initiative or is well into operating with re-use in mind, there are basic themes and common messages that need to be championed throughout your company. Some of these basic themes include:

• Having an agreed upon common definition of Commonization and Re-use that is well communicated and understood.
• Organizations must be able to define and measure to their re-use targets .
• Having all the key information available when selecting a candidate part or assembly to re-use.

PLM provides the platform for which a company can realize its optimal re-use potential to:

• More Innovation - By re-using validated components and processes so you can spend time innovating.
• Faster To Market - By locating, evaluating, and selecting the best alternatives for re-use quicker.
• Be Compliant - By re-using designs that are pre-validated to compliance requirements.
• Get Optimized - By designing flexible manufacturing process and facilities that can be shared across multiple programs.
• Go Global - By establishing program strategies that help you strike the right balance between common and unique content.

As world leader in PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) solutions, Siemens PLM Software develops and markets PLM solutions that support industry processes and provide a virtual vision of the entire life cycle of products from conception to maintenance.

Siemens PLM Software portfolio of solutions provides an integrated PLM platform that makes it possible to design and develop products achieving your re-use targets.