Manufacturing Executive - January/February 2009 - (Page 17) have the agility to respond quickly and accurately to an opthe year ahead, especially in the auto industry,” Flegel says. portunity, you’re not going to capture these demand waves.” “We also need to collaborate better so we can exchange One big problem, Montgomery says, is that even when project knowledge and product modules between our faccompanies are agile enough to win the business and respond tories and between our partners in a more optimised way to to sudden new customer demands, they may still end up loscut costs and be more flexible in our production, whatever ing money. the market conditions.” “It’s no good for manufacturing to be agile if they haven’t PLM Potential got together with the rest of the business,” Montgomery says. “I am staggered by the amount of companies I come Key technologies, such as product lifecycle management across that are taking too many risks. I am talking to CFO (PLM) systems that allow the virtual design and development after CFO and they are saying that the biggest worry they have is that when they are taking on a new engagement with a client, which combines both product and service offerings, they have no Process changes and collaboration clue whether they are going to make any money issues challenge agility success out of it or not.” me poll agIlIty A Modular Approach Q: Please rate the following challenges in becoming agile: 22.9% Sustaining management focus 11% 66% Montgomery believes that in many manufacAbility to quickly access, turing companies, up to 40% of the information 60.3% 33.3% analyse information 6.3% that goes into a new bid is actually guesswork. Ability to collaborate with 45.9% 47.7% 6.3% He says companies need to focus on what he customers, partners calls “opportunity response optimisation,” where Ability to quickly implement 7% 50.4% 42.5% process changes they break down the different elements of both the product and associated services into discrete Sufficient financial resources 11.8% 51.8% 36.3% modules that can be brought together in different Low = Medium = High = ways depending on each customer’s need. “That means greater componentisation and adopting a customer engagement model, not a product modof new products before ever pushing a plant floor button, el,” he adds. “ERP systems hold things at a fairly high level. traditionally offer strong potential to help companies foster They don’t hold them at the usage attribute level, so we don’t greater collaboration across the business and create more have the right breakdown knowledge about what modules we agile and responsive processes. can reuse, how they work together, and what percentage we That’s increasingly important. Executives in the Euromay need to do differently to fulfill a new order.” pean survey highlight the greatest challenges to creating a He cites one European company that recently adopted a more agile enterprise as the need for rapid implementation modular approach and restructured the way it configures of process changes and the ability to collaborate successfulthe requirement process with its customers. Doing so has ly with customers and partners. That’s critical if companies resulted in a 15% increase in accuracy on all its bids. Now, want to benefit from cost-effective networks of developwhen the company is engaged in an engineering-to-order ment and production partners in low-cost countries. deal, because it knows how to gather and structure the data, Bertrand Godillot, business development manager for PLM the goal is to reach 95% accuracy so it can be clear when a products at Oracle, says, “Agility demands an infrastructure profit is made. that allows lots of collaboration so that you can work together with partners to identify the opportunities and design and build “That’s pretty impressive,” Montgomery says. new products while still having control of the supply chain.” Breaking down individual product and manufacturing Philips Healthcare is a case in point. Its €6.5 billion reveknowledge is close to Flegel’s heart at Daimler, too. Like nue accounts for a quarter of the entire Philips group. It uses other auto manufacturers worldwide, Daimler is seeking new PLM technology to provide an integrated platform to enable processes and technological approaches to help it weather the it to “design anywhere, build anywhere,” says Oracle’s economic storm as sales of key luxury brands such as MerGodillot. “The goal is to move from vertical integration to a cedes begin to take a market beating. partly outsourced model, not just for components, but also The need is urgent. Overall for final assembly, so as Philips car sales in Daimler’s home designs its products, it also demarket in Germany in 2008, signs a supply chain to go with for example, were reportedly it,” he explains. down to the lowest levels since Philips is looking for a 20% reunification in 1990, according cycle time reduction in time to the VDA, Europe’s automakto market from its PLM investers association. ment. “I see modularisation and inAndy Kennington, EMEA Heinrich Flegel tegration as key factors for agile marketing director for Siemens’ Daimler manufacturing technologies in Teamcenter portfolio, says, modularisation and inte“I see as key factors for agile gration manufacturing technologies in the year ahead. “ Manufacturing JAN/FEB-09 Executive 17
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