Innovative product designs can contribute significantly to a company’s revenues. but novelty is the key.
by Jayashree Mendes
Considering that more mncs are planning to invest or expand their presence in India, the country has a good opportunity to emerge from the shadow of the services market and throw up as a global leader. Thr rising demand in India coupled with investments can help the country’s manufacturing sector grow manifold.
However, in order to capture this opportunity, manufacturing companies will have to improve their productivity dramatically. For long, there’s a general impression that Indian manufacturers have been performing below potential. Possibly, it was the lack of motivation or the need to keep costs down that compelled them to do that. However, global economic growth is poised to create opportunities for low-cost manufacturers everywhere. This can work to India’s advantage.
But there are a few things that need to be taken care of first. In order to go global or attract investments, manufacturers must improve their processes, product-lines, efficiency, among other things.
Most importantly, while processes and efficiency are at the back-end, products is what the market sees. Companies can achieve this by taking recourse to technology that has become cheaper than never before and come up with compelling products that guarantee exports. Ashish Bhat, executive VP, country division lead, digital factory, Siemens Ltd, says, “We have the concept of digital factory which can help manufacturers work out design solutions. The digital factory concept starts with product design, production design, PLM, automation and MES. Now with Mindsphere, all these technologies will address the complete manufacturing value chain. Companies can only begin manufacturing when they first decide what they would like to make and how. Those companies that seek to expand their portfolio can create a digital twin of the whole chain which means that while the plant is in operation and one is planning a new product, or an upgrade, it can be done based on the actual plant parameters.”
Companies are adopting technological advancements to drive product development. Recently, Bharat Forge has selected the ThingWorx IoT Platform from PTC to monitor its operations to improve operational efficiency and factory quality. Yogesh Zope, group CIO, Bharat Forge, said, “Every technology today is helping companies inch towards Industry 4.0. It’s critical for India’s manufacturing sector to thrive in the next decade. For this to thrive, the need of the hour is for a strong, scalable IIoT platform to support quick adoption of Industry 4.0 best practices. With PTC’s ThingWorx platform we foresee a good synergy in terms of technology and vision for adoption of IIoT in India. We have kickstarted initial deployment of ThingWorx at our manufacturing plant at Pune. We expect to drive value by capturing real time OEE, machine downtime, quality KPI’s in the first phase followed with adoption of machine learning and artificial intelligence for achieving predictive maintenance capability in the near future.”
Kalyan Sridhar, country manager, PTC, says, “Since 1985, PTC has been enabling customers to stay one step ahead of the competition by combining strategic vision with leading, field proven technology, helping companies to achieve their business goals. In 1988, we developed parametric, associative feature-based, solid computer-aided design (CAD) modeling software. As technology evolved over the next decade, in 1998, we developed an Internet-based product for product lifecycle management (PLM). Our solutions enabled manufacturers to design, operate and maintain complex products.”
BUILD TO SPEC
Few understand that the first step to manufacturing competitiveness is developing design capabilities. Hitherto, this capability was mainly present in large companies. Then, and even today, design is a highly resource-intensive process. A design process of a new product calls for skilled manpower, sophisticated tools and plenty of time to experiment. Since it falls under the purview of R&D, only large companies can afford to spend time and money, putting smaller players at a significant disadvantage. Since the smaller companies cannot afford such costs, the only recourse they have is acquiring patented technology from larger companies.
In a bid to boost the digital transformation of India’s manufacturing industry, global 3D experience major Dassault Systemes launched “3DExperience Twin”—an integrated solution that allows manufacturers to design and visualise the entire model of the factory. This solution would help existing automotive OEMs looking to expand production lines for electric vehicles (EV) or start-ups looking to set up infrastructure from scratch, Dassault Systemes said. This offering is designed to cut down the time frame and lead to a substantial cost saving, as it allows the entire planning, simulation, testing and validation in the virtual form. “With 3DExperience Twin, one can ensure the right allocation of the spaces for their activities — such as machinery, raw material, goods storage, inbound and outbound docking systems and so on,” said Samson Khaou, MD, Dassault Systemes.
Businesses are now focusing on manufacturing innovations, transforming the process of mass production to mass customisation. India’s product makers must embrace global best practices in operations—while tailoring them to India’s unique environment—to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the country’s manufacturing investments dramatically. It would help if they avail of new information and knowledge and make use of user-friendly simulation tools that can impact the design process. Simulation apps for additive manufacturing can help them streamline the workflow.
Vishwanath Godavarty, regional account manager (South Asia), Materialise, says, “Companies can excel in manufacturing if they can create new designs frequently. Additive manufacturing is one such way. Design teams can reach an optimal solution faster by providing other departments with apps to let them experiment with parameters affecting manufacturability and aesthetics, for example. With simulation apps, you do not have to be an expert in numerical simulation to suggest design iteration based on high-fidelity multiphysics simulation results.”
PLANNING FOR THE LONG TERM
Earlier, when products were crafted one at a time, the design and manufacturing processes were often done by the same person. For example, a craftsman would design and build a chest of drawers or a carriage. Some trades would employ apprentices to learn the craft, which also included design. Large projects might have included an architect or lead designer along with a team of engineers and R&D. A design for excellence (DFX) methodology is a systematic way to communicate a set of knowledge that focuses on successful product design using a desired set of characteristics. For example, design for production includes a set of rules or constraints that the design must incorporate or meet to permit production at a given factory.
As per industry reports, the aerospace and defence industry in India is one of the fastest growing markets in the world with a significant push to indigenous manufacturing. Promoting self-reliance, indigenisation and technology upgrades, achieving economies of scale and developing capabilities for exports require that the talent to be developed in-house at a rapid pace to meet the demand. In this respect, Dassault Systemes is setting up a 3D Experience Centre in Andhra Pradesh. Khaou says as part of experiential learning, the centre will be made available to the students either on campus or on cloud so that they have first-hand knowledge of operating on the platform. It will provide simulation and tele-operated learning facility, where needed, and to facilitate remote learning as well. It will also act as an innovation hub for incubating start-ups and promoting start-up culture in Andhra Pradesh.
When one is considering revenue and profit, there are a few ways to look at the development of a new product or technology. Projected profit margins sometimes never seem big enough. In the early stages of designing a product, the anticipated earnings from such an endeavour can be quickly wiped away if the manufacturing and production impact is not fully understood. Whether it is a brand new product or an evolution that results in some manufacturing or production changes, it’s important to consider the downstream impact of design changes and product decisions.
Considering only the product design cost, which often pales in comparison to the capital expenses and the long-term cost of ownership, a lot of emphasis gets placed on the cost of pieces and parts. Though critical to understand, it can often be misleading without properly vetting against the downstream expenses.
So what is the low-hanging fruit to best and fully calculate these factors? Early engagement is the key. Don’t lock out or over-constrain the options available to production. As the product development or process change discussions begin, include the manufacturing and production teams. This will shed light on the means to more efficiently handle and manufacture the product, and will provide early opportunities for considering as many alternatives as possible, casting a wide net to grab the best ideas early on.