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* Welcome *
Welcome to this issue of 2PLM, an e-zine distributed every two weeks on
a free subscription basis.
This week's article "Postponement: How Design Engineering Contributes
to Success" is authored by Dick Bourke and Bob Stahl. They recently wrote an
article for the American Production & Inventory
Control Society's (APICS) e-zine to alert manufacturing personnel to the
contributions of Design Engineering. With the permission of APICS,
we are pleased to reproduce the article below, in a slightly modified
form, for our readers.
First though, with reference to previous
issues
of 2PLM, Jack Conaway of Labblee Corporation
wrote
I applaud your efforts to standardize the terminology for PLM. I hope this
effort will employ the strategy of Occum's Razor to produce the minimum
number of terms in the PLM glossary. The current alphabet soup of PLM has
been aggravated by the attempts of marketing departments of software and
services vendors to differentiate their offerings. This has led to a batch
of overlapping concepts some of which are myths, such as the ill-fated CPC
(Collaborative Product Commerce), rather than realities.
Having messed around with CIM models in the 1980's and SCOR and
Enterprise Integration models since then, I would caution against
building standard end-to-end models for PLM. There is too much variability
in PLM activities from industry to industry and company to company to
support a standard end-to-end model. Rather, the superset of components
for PLM should be defined and individual enterprises can combine the
components in such a way to best support their industry models and business
strategies.
Thanks for the advice Jack. We'll keep William of Ockham in mind as we move
forward.
Tanuj Bansal of Autodesk
wrote
I have been following the battle of the acronyms (BOTA) over the last
few issues. While very informative and educational, it surprises me that
we spend so much time defining, slicing, dicing and chopping these
acronyms. When did a customer wake up in the morning and say "I need a
cup of coffee, a bagel and, for that project delivery problem I am
having, a slice of PDM or PLM would be good, pronto".
Customers worry about their business problems and they want to learn how
to solve these problems. The overarching definition or term could very
well be soup du jour. It would be nice if we ignored these acronyms,
spent more time mapping solutions to these problems and educating the
community of resulting business benefits.
OK, Tanuj, you may be right - we'll let the Three Letter Acronyms rest
in peace for a while.
* Postponement: How Design Engineering Contributes to Success *
At times we're probably all guilty of thinking too narrowly within the
walls of our individual experience. For example, for several decades ERP and
CAD have been seen as different worlds and, on both sides, specialists have
pretty much ignored what happens beyond the boundaries of their own system.
But things are changing. Over the last few years, PLM has been sneaking up on us.
When John Stark wrote that "PLM is the activity of managing a company's products
all the way across their lifecycles in the most effective way" it looked
simplistic to the point of being meaningless, but as the concept matures
it becomes clear that by focusing on the product, rather than on specific
product-related activities, it has changed the way we look at manufacturing and
support of products. It has united product development (beginning of lifecycle,
CAD, project portfolio management) with product manufacturing (Factory Automation,
ERP) and with product support and recycling (product portfolio management, ERP,
end of life). And companies are taking it on board to
help with a stack of acute needs such as
- managing products in the DASAMASA (Design Anywhere, Sell Anywhere, Manufacture
Anywhere, Support Anywhere) environment
- supporting new strategies such as mass customization and postponement
Postponement is a good example of a strategy that crosses the old departmental
and system boundaries. It provides the capabilities to plan capacities, components,
and materials to forecast, but delays adding the options into the final product
configuration until the latest possible stage of production. Once the customer order
is received, product realization can be finished quickly using stocked
components, and the product shipped.
The advantages of doing this effectively are:
- Increasing customer satisfaction - the highest rating in a recent survey of
the American Production & Inventory Control Society (Ref. 1)
- Offering customers the choices they want
- Reducing finished goods inventories, dramatically
- Facilitating sourcing - overseas and domestically - for cost advantages, while
maintaining core competencies and control of the supply chain
Success with this competitive strategy requires support far beyond the manufacturing plant
organization. It involves many players in the product lifecycle - all functions of
the company and even members of the supply chain.
Our purpose here is to identify design engineering best practices that will help maximize
the benefits of Postponement.
- Modular Product Design - The product is designed in a way that enables
smaller sub-systems and/or components to be able to function properly
when assembled and tested as an end item. CAD/CAM systems have
enabled this practice for many years. This design mindset can facilitate
an effective Postponement strategy.
- Design Reuse (use as few parts as possible) - Hand-in-glove with modular
design, the value here is to gain flexibility and, of course, reduce the number
of parts required and thus, in inventory. Today, there are software tools available
for classifying and cleansing the parts database. (The predecessor to this was
known as Group Technology.) An offshoot of this task is the designation of a
preferred parts list.
- Design for Manufacturing/Assembly (DFMA) - This is the concept of evaluating
product complexity early in the design phase to insure ease of assembly, reduce costs,
and lead-times. Through cooperative efforts of design and manufacturing engineering,
the boundaries of distinction become blurred. A key focus is to minimize costs before
product release to manufacturing, because cost reduction later in the product lifecycle
becomes more difficult. This DFMA effort should also extend to outside suppliers in the
supply chain. Software tools are available to help.
- Planning Bills-of-Material - From all of the above, the engineering group (along with
Sales/Marketing and Master Scheduling) needs to help and support the construction of
Planning Bills that will be used by Master Scheduling to plan sets of parts and materials
inside the planning time fence.
- Product Configuration Software - Just modular bills may not be adequate
to support a speedy order entry function. Instead of taking valuable engineering
time to individually configure customer orders - and thereby inflating quote and order
entry lead-time - capture the variation logic in software to simplify the order
entry and customer configuration process. (There are commercial products available.)
- Product Line Rationalization (PLR) - Don't just mechanize the current situation. Fix
problem areas such as bloated product lines, mish-mash of features and options,
unprofitable products and non-standard components. PLR is an essential part of
successful Postponement. The specific support of Sales/Marketing, as well as Manufacturing
Engineering, is required.
Our Message
Effective Postponement is more than just applying recognized planning and scheduling
techniques and the methods of lean manufacturing. Like PLM it needs people to think
and act differently. Reaping the many benefits requires most of the organization to
understand and support Postponement - Design Engineering in particular.
Going forward, purely commodity products will not provide a competitive edge. Furthermore, they are
likely to be take-over targets of lower-cost producing nations. To ensure
competitiveness, American manufacturing companies need the ability to provide customized
products and services, fully utilizing the concepts of Postponement.
Authors
Dick Bourke can be contacted at
dbourke669@aol.com and at
www.bourkeconsulting.com
Bob Stahl can be contacted at
RStahlSr@aol.com and on
+1 508/226-0477.
Cited Reference
Ref 1. The Adaptive Supply Chain: Postponement for Profitability, results of a survey of
members of the American Production & Inventory Control Society, August 2003.
Details (580 kB, PDF)
Other Resources - available from APICS and elsewhere.
Sales Forecasting - A New Approach
by Wallace & Stahl, 2002.
Master Scheduling in the 21 Century
by Wallace & Stahl, 2003.
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