Intelligent Manufacturing € August € 1995 € Vol. 1
€ No. 8
Application Spotlight:
Digital Manufacturing Process System
Automobile manufacturer Chrysler Corp. (Auburn Hills, Mich.) and
aerospace giant Dassault Systemes (Paris, France) have developed a
next-generation CAD system that creates a seamless union between
product development and manufacturing. The implementation of this
system at Chrysler will help to significantly reduce manufacturing
lead times.
The Digital Manufacturing Process System (DMAPS) is a computerized
end-to-end product and process management system, which enables
Chrysler to design, construct and run a virtual manufacturing
facility. DMAPS builds upon Dassault's CATIA computer-aided design
system which Chrysler first used in 1984. The CAD system replaced
engineering drawings and allowed for an integrated design. This led
designers to better understand how their parts related to others
during the design of the vehicle.
Using CATIA, for instance, Chrysler was able to design its Neon
compact car in 31 months for less than $1.3 billion - one of its
fastest projects ever. Now, DMAPS will allow engineers to build
tooling and robotic assembly stations complete with the knowledge of
how they fit into the process flow of all manufacturing
operations.
"The aim of DMAPS is to simulate and validate everything we do in
manufacturing - the tooling, manufacturing process, material handling
and sub-system process layout," explained Frank Ewasyshyn, Chrysler's
VP of advance manufacturing engineering. "As we become more process
and system focused in the way we manufacture products, DMAPS gives us
a predictor before we ever buy or build a tool. With it, we create a
seamless union between product development and manufacturing."
Inside the virtual manufacturing facility, engineers can tune key
elements - robot programming, assembly sequences, ergonomics - and
see how they affect the cycle time and build quality of the vehicle.
Its capabilities also include full tolerancing and coordinate
measuring machines (CMM) simulation for inspection.
"This will allow Chrysler to shorten manufacturing lead time by 20%,"
Ewasyshyn said, "and will also allow us to more readily identify and
eliminate process variation."
An important breakthrough is the interconnectivity between process
design and development. Simulation of specific production runs can be
performed in order to assess manufacturability and evaluate costs of
producing the design in a given factory. Bottleneck assembly line
capacity can be checked before the assembly plant is built. A key
feature also allows for the creation of a centralized knowledge bank
for individual processes and tools.
"The Chrysler DMAPS implementation illustrates a new wave in the
CAD/CAM/CAE industry," said Bernard Charles, Dassault's president of
R&D.; "This system enables concurrent product and process
optimization by integrating product digital mock-up and company
digital know-how. We're able to focus on the entire product and
process development cycle."
The system enables Chrysler to represent its manufacturing processes
in a consistent way, with all users sharing the same data. This
allows engineering and manufacturing to speak the "same language"
when sharing information. With the CAD system, product design changes
are implemented quickly. All users are instantly notified and can
work the changes into their affected parts. With DMAPS, manufacturing
requirements are automatically taken into account as well, leading to
a reduction in costs and cycle time over the entire process.
Finally, since manufacturing processes are stored in a database,
DMAPS allows the same change control methodology which has been used
for product data to be applied to manufacturing data. Additionally,
the links between the product data, manufacturing process and tooling
enable change notification and impact analysis across the entire
extended enterprise.
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