Manufacturer to implement process management solution in bid to link production, engineering groups
Berlin September 25, 2003 Bombardier Transportation has tapped solution provider Polyplan Technologies to build a digital shared environment for the company's engineering and manufacturing functions in a bid to reduce costs and risks, as well as to simplify manufacturing processes within Bombardier Transportation's product development process.
Polyplan said it would deploy its Collaborative Manufacturing Process Management (cMPM) to enable Bombardier Transportation's manufacturing and engineering groups to define assembly and tooling strategies, as well as to design manufacturing processes and prepare shop floor work instructions.
By working directly from the digital mock-up of the targeted assembly, Polyplan users should be able to react more quickly to engineering changes. Also, Polyplan users will support multi-site interactive design and analysis to allow Bombardier to further collaborate with their suppliers and customers, according to the solution provider.
In addition, the cMPM solution makes it possible to reuse manufacturing competencies and create standard processes through the management and sharing of manufacturing process information, geometry, specifications, resource data and documentation. The Polyplan solution is integrated with the customer's computer-aided design, product data management and enterprise resource planning systems with the goal of providing coherency between products, resources and manufacturing processes throughout multiple systems and plants.
"The deployment of Polyplan cMPM will allow our manufacturing process planners to fully collaborate with engineering early in the product lifecycle," stated Gaston Hebert, executive vice president and chief engineer at Bombardier Transportation, which produces locomotives, rail cars and transit systems.
Hebert said the solution would provide the company with a head start to prepare its employees and facilities for new products and to react rapidly to design changes. "In this way, we can deliver products to our customers faster, while improving quality and innovation at the same time as reducing our costs," Hebert concluded.
Said Robert Beauchemin, president and CEO of Polyplan, "The early collaboration between engineering and manufacturing not only significantly reduces the time to deliver the first units to customers, but it also reduces the errors between engineering and manufacturing, which means improved product quality and increased productivity."
