Product lifecycle management (PLM) is typically considered as an enterprise tool for facilitating the integration and collaboration of a manufacturer's functional departments. With PLM's growing ability to digitally visualize the production environment, it is rapidly taking on additional roles. For example, the digital manufacturing tools of PLM are becoming the optimum means to simulate, plan and improve the use of factory assets, both machines and people.

The growing pressure to simulate, plan and optimize utilization of factory assets -- both equipment and people -- is due to increasing competitive demands for product flexibility. Growing production complexity can't succeed without efficient and affordable optimization.

The automotive industry is the classic success story for the 3-D simulation tools available with PLM solutions, says John Haning, information technology manager at automotive supplier HMS Co., Troy, Mich. In the past, automakers could compete without the advantages simulation software offers in process planning. Traditional auto plants produced only a couple models of a car or truck, relying on fixed tooling. But that's changed.

One of the biggest issues in today's production is the incorporation of multiple vehicles at the same plant in much higher densities than would ever have been considered in the past. "Proposed process changes must be quickly analyzed for safety and efficiency," says Haning. "It's a competitive imperative."

"In the old days, with dedicated [production] lines, asset and employee safety considerations were not often challenged by process reconfiguration," Haning notes. "With dedicated lines, we felt relatively confident that our lines would perform as intended once they were built on the plant floor. But today's flexible plants incorporate such a high level of automation, including robots, conveyors, fixtures and other equipment, that we need to verify that both the assets and employees can be reprogrammed or reconfigured to build vehicles with vastly different designs -- such as a four-door sedan versus a pickup truck."

Haning makes a compelling case for the 3-D simulation world. "The level of complexity in today's assembly lines could not be accomplished in a 2-D environment during processing," he says. For robot simulation, HMS relies on a simulation solution from DELMIA, a subsidiary of Dassault SystŠmes.

The software is DELMIA's IGRIP with the UltraSpot add-on for the design and simulation of complex spot welding tooling and fixturing.

Haning says HMS uses UltraSpot for robot positioning, tool and peripheral equipment placement, reachability, cycle time, validation of the process and off-line programming.

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