Manufacturing Process Management (MPM) is the process of defining and managing the manufacturing processes used to make parts, assemble final products, and perform inspection. MPM is performed by manufacturing engineers, typically disconnected from the product engineering processes and using standalone tools like Microsoft Excel to describe the processes' plans. Manufacturing process information is scattered on desktops making the process slow, inefficient and error prone. This leads to delays in production ramp-up, defective products due to inaccurate work instructions, and a very slow and expensive change process.
Time-to-market pressures, product cost reduction needs, and increasing mass-customization are causing leading manufacturers to focus on the MPM process as a source of competitive advantage. They are seeking to digitize and automate the MPM process and electronically integrate it with engineering and production.
PTC's Manufacturing Process Management Solution enables the manufacturing engineer to associatively transform the eBOM to the mBOM, define digital definitions of process plans with associative links to the mBOMs and manufacturing resources required for each operation. This is managed in the same Product Development Solution (PDS) used to define the products enabling one, integral change management process for both engineering and manufacturing. The process plan data is electronically synchronized with ERP systems using ESI. NC tool paths and CMM inspection programs are generated associatively to the design model and electronic work instructions are dynamically generated - so all shop-floor deliverables are always up to date.
Manufacturers deploying PTC solutions for the MPM process can dramatically reduce the time and cost of engineering changes to improve manufacturing engineering and production efficiency, reduce the time for production ramp-up, and reduce the scrap and rework rates.
