Digital Transformation of Manufacturing
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
India is on the threshold of a manufacturing revolution aided by a huge domestic market, rising global demand for high quality products manufactured at globally competitive rates, and above all, favourable government policies that facilitate such an industrial ecosystem. With a strong impetus on developing industrial corridors, smart cities and modern manufacturing hubs, there is a significant push to manufacture products locally. In the aerospace and defense sectors, global companies are already sourcing extensively from local tier one and tier two suppliers, while in the automotive sector, domestic manufacturers are expanding their capacity with new plants, and global players too are exploring opportunities. India as a hub for quality manufacturing activities in product design, R&D and assembling is evolving and has an estimated potential to reach US$ 1 trillion by 2025.
It is against this backdrop that Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE company and a world leader in 3D design software, 3D Digital Mock Up and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, held its first “Manufacturing in the Age of Experience” event in India at Pune in early June 2017. This regional adaptation of the company’s global “Age of Experience” event series provided 100 C-level executives and business leaders from manufacturing sectors in automotive, transportation, aerospace, defense and industrial engineering verticals with a detailed perspective on steps that businesses can take to digitally transform their manufacturing operations.
Inaugurating the event, Samson Khaou, Managing Director, India, Dassault Systèmes elaborated upon why digital connectivity is important to improve manufacturing efficiency. “The ‘Make in India’ initiative is now a global agenda and there is an incredible opportunity for Indian enterprises and SMEs across key verticals to take a giant leap,” he said. According to Khaou, the first step that Indian manufacturing companies need to take to compete with their global counterparts in an experience economy is to disrupt their traditional manufacturing operations with more agile, flexible, scalable manufacturing processes. In this context, he pointed out four areas of the manufacturing equation that need attention: Digital Manufacturing, Manufacturing Operations Management, Supply Chain Planning & Operations, and Additive Manufacturing.
With over 3 bn euros in revenue in 2016 globally, Dassault Systèmes counts among its clientele world leaders across 12 industry verticals – incorporating sectors as diverse as transportation & mobility, aerospace & defense, industrial equipment, marine & offshore, life sciences, finance & business services, among others – who are at the heart of innovation. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is at this point of time, a new milestone in the journey that began with the inception of the company in the early 1980s with 3D design (CATIA) for aircraft building for a single client; moved up in the 1990s to 3D DMU – digital mock-up – Boeing 777 being the first example; and achieved the next milestone in the new millennium with 3D PLM – product lifecycle management – an early user being the Toyota Motor Corporation for its end-to-end vehicle development process.
Along the way, the company acquired brands like DELMIA, SIMULIA, ENOVIA, SolidWorks, GEOVIA, EXALEAD, 3D VIA, BIOVIA, NETVIBES and 3DEXCITE among others, and maintains a leadership position in the segment. The Dassault Systèmes vision is to enable everyone – from product designers, engineers, companies, suppliers to end-use consumers, and their respective communities – to create, share, and experience in 3D.
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is a business experience platform. It provides software solutions for every department within a company – from engineering to marketing and sales – that help clients in their value creation process, to create differentiating consumer experiences. With a single, easy to-use interface, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, available on premise and on cloud, powers Industry Solution Experiences based on 3D design, analysis, simulation, and intelligence software in a collaborative, interactive environment. It provides business and people with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovations. Its world-leading solutions transform the way products are designed, produced, and supported. Its collaborative solutions foster social innovation, expanding possibilities for the virtual world to improve the real world. The group brings value to over 220,000 customers of all sizes in all industries in more than 140 countries.
Addressing the assembled mediapersons, Guillaume Vendroux, CEO, DELMIA, Dassault Systèmes said, “The world of manufacturing has shifted its focus from mass production to mass customisation and quick delivery to an on-demand generation of consumers. Complete synchronisation and integration of operations, modularity and predictive analytics have enabled manufacturers to provide consumers with a personalised experience. Additive manufacturing is becoming a game changer. ‘Manufacturing in the Age of Experience’ offers a unique opportunity to explore how industries can digitally transform with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.”
The event also provided a preview of the future of smart manufacturing in the 3DEXPERIENCE Playground, a technology showcase featuring interactive stations. These included:
- 3D Lean Experience – a real shop floor experience developed for Operators, Team Leaders and Supervisors, where they can create smaller teams, participate in 5-minute team meeting, and in accordance with Lean philosophy, be collaborative to empower workers, to generate improvement coming from bottom, leading to Lean Transformation.
- Future Manufacturing Cockpit – This provides an ultimate perspective on tomorrow’s global enterprises where production complexity is handled with ease by an all-new, revolutionary holographic 3D view on all levels of the value creation process: from a global vision over a plant stage down to a single line’s assessment, universal transparency and comprehensible information ensure right decisions at the right time
- Digital Continuity – Demonstrate four scenarios from Product Engineering all the way to manufacturing and back to Product Engineering
- 3D VQDT & Apriso – The 3D visual quality defect tracking (3D VQDT) is part of the Apriso suite of manufacturing software solutions that help manage production, quality, warehouse, maintenance and labour processes across manufacturing operations, and
- 3DEXPERIENCE Factory – The smart factory solution to design and simulate the behaviour of the full production line, by combining HTC Vive and Dassault Systemes’ Virtual Reality technology.
Talking about the technology showcase, Samson Khaou added “With ‘Manufacturing in the Age of Experience’ we will touch upon how technology is breaking down barriers between virtual and reality through the concepts of solar-powered airplanes, smart homes and offices, 3D simulated human hearts, and self-driven cars. It is inspiring new generations of makers, engineers, scientists, brand evangelists and CEOs to develop the disruptive experiences that are defining our era and creating industries of the future.”
India is a significant part of the knowledge industry and an important contributor to Dassault Systèmes global research and development platform. It has six offices located at Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata and Mumbai, and three R&D labs at Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore, and a total strength of 2,500. The Pune lab is a vibrant place and one of the fastest growing units among the three, the western region of the country accounting for a third of the company’s India business. Dassault Systèmes has been achieving double digit growth in India during the last few years. With a customer base in the range of 8,000 spanning OEMs to MSMEs, and 60 business partners, the company expects the trend to continue as the operations grow across various industries and more efficiency achieved. Finally, the company is also engaged seriously with the next generation, through its association with over 1500 educational institutions in the country, getting them on board the digital revolution right at the formative stage.