June 1997, Volume 14, No. 6 Bose Fine-Tunes Manufacturing with PDM

For Bose, the automotive stereo market presents a number of challenges not generally encountered in the company's traditional home and professional speaker business. Unlike stereo speakers used in freestanding component systems, auto sound system speakers must frequently be redesigned or modified to keep pace with the changes in the bodies and interiors of different car models. In addition, Bose must closely coordinate its design and manufacturing cycle with that of its OEMs, a requirement that does not apply to its home and professional speakers, which are sold through distributors.

To satisfy these agile manufacturing requirements, Bose has created a concurrent engineering environment in its worldwide design and manufacturing operations, supported by product data management (PDM). This environment has enabled Bose to shorten the development cycle for all its products, while maintaining quality. "Concurrent engineering is crucial for achieving the on-time delivery that our automotive customers require," said William Canal, Bose's product data system project manager.

An important component of the concurrent engineering environment at Bose is the integration of MRP with the Sherpa PDM system from Sherpa Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.; http://www.sherpa.com). By tying the PDM system into site-specific MRP databases at its plants in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Ireland, Bose has enabled its manufacturing and design engineers to more easily access the latest on-line design drawings, specifications, engineering change notices (ECNs), and other product information at any time.

With this capability, manufacturing engineers will be better able to make intelligent decisions on the fly to keep production lines constantly supplied with the right parts, in the right quantities, at the lowest cost. "Linking our PDM and MRP environments will ensure that every bill of material reflects a product's latest ECNs and that, as a result, our MRP database always contains the 'best' engineering data," Canal said.

Bose's PDM system provides the foundation for launching product designs and ECNs into the manufacturing stream. For each assembly in a Bose loudspeaker or electronic product, the PDM system maintains all part records, bill of material data, and any associated CAD, ECN and other document files in a centralized, easily accessible PDM database.

In its current standalone implementation, benefits of the PDM system for manufacturing include:

• Faster access to drawings and other design documents. Drawings no longer have to be mailed to manufacturing sites, but can be downloaded over a wide area network (WAN) link.
• Easy access to fixturing information for setting up production lines. Manufacturing engineers can now download and view all of the drawings of their assembly line components, or fixtures, as well as any changes to fixtures which often accompany changes to designs.
• Convenience of a paperless environment. With design drawings available online, there is no need for purchasing personnel to plot out the drawings for inspection purposes.

The integration of PDM and MRP marks the next step in manufacturing automation at Bose. Once a part design is promoted through the PDM system's electronic sign-off to a release state, it is 'pushed,' along with its bill of material, to the appropriate manufacturing plant's local MRP II database.

Through the PDM system, authorized personnel at Bose can interactively reach across into any plant's local MRP database to read data such as quantity available, local costs, purchase order information, current manufacturing revision number, and local effectivity dates.

Manufacturing engineers benefit from enterprise-wide information access. For example, in response to ECNs, they can access MRP data through the PDM system to determine which plant can respond to an ECN fastest or for the least cost.