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Digital Manufacturing is an approach involving people, process/practice, and technology that
uses PLM information to plan , engineer, and built the first instance of the product; ramp that
product up for volume production; and produce, monitor, and capture for other aspects of life
cycle the remaining instances of that products production using the minimum amount of
resources possible.
î Digital manufacturing includes the same elements as PLM: people, process/practice,
and technology. However, in digital manufacturing, there may be more focus on the
technology aspects
î the focus on technology also differentiate from manufacturing techniques that also
attempt to minimise the resources used in manufacturing but are more people focused, such
as lean manufacturing.
î xecause manufacturing is so well defined its goal is to produce exactly the specified
product using exactly the same amount of material, energy and people's time over and over
again.
î People also figure differently in digital manufacturing.
î ½n some manufacturing process, people may figure very little, with machines and
robotics performing a substantial portion of the actual production.
î ½n other manufacturing operations, people may perform critical process.
î Digital manufacturing is involved in the planning and engineering tasks necessary to
build the product to its specifications.
î ënce the product is planned and engineered and the first one built, the rest of the
products have to be built, since the first product rarely meets the specifications, tolerances,
and timings as defined by product engineering, there is a period of ramp up as the
manufacturing desired, the remaining products must be built exactly the same.
î he final function, monitoring, is capturing the information about the products
manufacture for future use in the product's lifecycle.

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î Manufacturing the first products is the first stage of the manufacturing process. Since
it is on the engineering ± manufacturing border, it is fuzzy where engineering leaves off and
manufacturing begins. At this intersection, the manufacturing of the first product is also a
large potential source of wasted time, energy, and material.
î ërganisations have myriad ways of dealing with this intersection between engineering
and manufacturing. Some organizations have manufacturing engineers in the engineering
section and attempt to hand off fully specified product designs and manufacturing process to
manufacturing. ëther organizations simply hand off the product specifications to
manufacturing. he manufacturing function is completely responsible for defining the
processes that actually manufacture the product.
î he manufacturing engineers in engineering fully define the processes, tooling, and
routings of the product to be manufactured.


Digital Manufacturing¶s goal is to eliminate this stage of the product introduction process in
real space.
î Digital manufacturing has the promise of greatly reducing the ramp-up time of
product manufacturing through simulation.
î Digital manufacturing has the potential to reduce a substantial amount of wasted time,
energy and material incurred during the ramp-up process.
î he reality is that the ramp-up period has become a luxury that most manufacturers
cannot afford. When cycle times were long, the ramp-up period was a small portion of the
total manufacturing cycle. However, as we discussed previously, one of the main drivers of
PLM is the rapidly decreasing cycle time. As cycle time decreases, ramp-up time increases as
a percentage of the overall manufacturing cycle. he waste during ramp-up time becomes
more prominent, and the focus is on eliminating or greatly reducing it.

 



 
î ºigure 7.4 shows the experience or learning curve.
î However, this time a figure that represents the amount of wasted time, energy, and
material is superimposed on the graph. his roughly triangular figure represents the cost
wasted during the ramp-up process. What digital manufacturing strives to do is save this
wasted time, energy, and material by starting virtual production at the top of the experience or
learning curve and only starting physical production when the learning curve begins to
bottom out.
î he ability to actuallyu do this will depend on a variety of factors. ºor production
processes that are highly automated with production. ëperations that are well defined and
suitable for curve virtually is high. ënce the simulations show the required results, the
instructions to produce them can be downloaded into the computers controlling the actual
equipment.
î ºor those processes that have a substantial amount of human interaction, the potential
for eliminating the costs of ramp up will be less. While factors external to the human
participants can be improved (e.g., reducing steps necessary to retrieve material, rearranging
the sequence of actions to eliminate wasted motion), the actual actions of the human beings
have to be learned and improved through repetition.

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î While digital manufacturing plays a critical role in manufacturing the first product
and attempts to eliminate manufacturing ramp up, it needs to continue to play an instrumental
role in manufacturing the rest of the products. Digital manufacturing applications are the
source of information that can be used to replace wasted time, energy, and material as
products continue to flow through the factory, digital manufacturing has information about
how the products should be manufactured. ½t can use that information both to compare
against the actual production of products ts and to capture information about the actual
production for use in other stages of the product's lifecycle.

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î Production Planning is an obvious use of the information developed to create the
factory flow simulation and analysis. Rather than attempting to allocate equipment time and
schedule production on the basis of aggregate numbers.
î he use of factory flow information allows production planners to use discrete timing
and flow information to efficiently allocate production and simulate that production to
determine unnecessary equipment changeovers, bottlenecks, or other production flow
problems.
î ½n a great number of situations, production planning is simply finging a schedule that
works. Little attempt is made to reduce the waste of time, energy, and material by finding
better schedules, even if finding the best or optimal schedule is not feasible. ½n addition,
production schedulers generally need to build in slack time, because their information about
processes and operation is incomplete. his further adds to the inefficiency.