New technology inventions
Today is the world of manufacturing, industries rely on design engineering, which consumes their maximum time. Almost 65-70% of total time in developing a product is for designing it.
The areas of concern for a manufacturing industry today are :
? Crashing of Design Cycle time with optimal resource used
? Product optimally priced yet maintaining the quality standard
? Minimal iteration of design or Getting it right the first time
? Retention of Design know how
? Elimination of rework / checking
? Reduction of human error to a minimum
? Knowledge centric process
? Robust Engineering and
The Technology (EKM / KBE):
A new technology has been developed for these manufacturing industries to streamline their work. This technology has termed by the organizations as Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) or for that matter Engineering Knowledge Management (EKM). Knowledge management helps us to identify, create, represent & ; distribute the knowledge for reuse, awareness and learning. It is a tool for progressive organization which gives a broad spectrum to the manufacturing organizations. It:
Helps the organization in making better informed decisions on performance, competitive advantage, innovation and design.
Helps the organization on Real Time Information Sharing.
Crashes design cycle time to market
Provides control on design and reuse of design
Helps achieving better productivity
Helps in knowledge retention & knowledge interpolation
Increases scalability of the product (based on application).
If brings more power & flexibility in design automation. It is a bridge between knowledge management & design automation. The aim is to capture product and process information to allow business model the engineering process and than use the model to automate all or the parts of process. It is still a new and emerging concept which:
Knows about the real world
Is able to handle the knowledge in a multi-disciplinary fashion
Knows how to structure and reuse the knowledge available
Allows automation
The traditional design and development approach for adding analytics to your design application has become obsolete now. The Engineering Knowledge Management (EKM) Framework does it for any and every manufacturing organization. The EKM / KBE Framework combines flexible design and customize development tools for building and managing the analytics of the design knowledge process in the organization. One can say that KBE / EKM act as a bridge between "Knowledge Management" and Design Automation.
Inputs to, procedure of and outputs from the technology:
Essential components in building an effective KBE application are :
Design process expertise
Programming capabilities of the KBE executives
Expertise in solution architecture
System integration expertise
It is a two step process:
Knowledge Transfer:
o Fetching knowledge and putting it in repository
o On the job peer discussions
o Formal apprenticeship
o Corporate libraries
o Professional training / mentoring programs
o Flow charts
o Power point presentations
Knowledge Utilization:
o Automating the knowledge repository
The ultimate outcome from this technology can be :
Shared intelligence
Improved performance
Competitive advantage, and
High level of innovation
o Sending this knowledge to different people like users, learners, etc.
Advantages:
It provides a three-tier advantage to people :
At the customer end, it helps in getting :
o Customized design for enhanced customer acquisition, value, and market share
o Scalability and flexibility of the product portfolio
o Crashed design time up to 80-90% (depending on application)
At design engineering end, it helps in :
o Significant reduction of manufacturing cycle time
o Capture of knowledge base over years
o Elimination of checking function: reduced costs
o Interpolation enabled for new product development
o Low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of designed infrastructure
o Risk Mitigation ? reduced dependence on critical Design Resources
? At the manufacturing end, it provides:
o Automation of Engineering database, leading to better integration with PLM / ERP
o Enhanced utilization of manufacturing infrastructure
o Automated high quality documentation
This technology has the potential to enhance the insights of design standardization and to formulate the design and development process activities in a coherent way. The Framework works in a coherent set of methods that includes product/process modeling, visualization support, proper ?best? level modeling, logic, engineering rules & ; reasoning and many other techniques.
The new technology emerging for engineering / manufacturing business not only helps the business crash the design / manufacturing cycle time but also best suited to tackle the problems as listed below :
Unification of scattered knowledge
High iteration of manpower
Elimination of redundant variation in design
Availability of data on the system (the drawing retrieval time)
Online data for troubleshooting for enhanced customer support
Addressing clients demand for faster and customized products
Interpolation between the variation of product
Elimination of productive design time consumed on rework / design error
Realization of Business Value from using the EKM Framework comes from reducing costs as well as increasing effectiveness and business focus. This can be further explained as below:
Reducing operating expenses
o Faster implementation of proven practices (predictive and condition-based service, optimized resources)
o Variable pricing of business cost drivers
o Reducing costs by improving business processes
o Reducing IT costs (implementation and operation) and/or conversion to Variable Cost
Increasing effectiveness
o Eliminate silos of information, streamline operations workflow
o Digitized processes are more visible and adaptable
o Real-time information sharing and processing
o Faster Service
o Supports high volume, minimizes staffing needs
Freeing up the organization for 80-90% of the total design time (or for that matter 40-45% of total manufacturing time) so that it can focus on sources of competitive advantage
o Increased revenue and profits from service
o New products and services
o Increased ability to manage service performance, reduced administrative costs
o Increased customer satisfaction
Automating the processes and all entities involved in execution and then integrating them into the process execution engine
o Single point of management for the value-net, tracks the process and associated public data across the network
o Private information, systems, & processes kept separate but integrated with public processes
Continuous monitoring of the process, flag exceptions in real time, conduct analysis for optimization, and proactive interventions
Closed-loop for process improvement, enabling continuous process innovation
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