The Importance of Product Data Management (Part 3 – the Finale) THE 1-10-100 RULE

Posted on behalf of John Holub.

In the previous installment of this series, we discussed a company that had issues with having shipped product to the wrong revision of a design. More often than not, this is the cause of not having the ability to control access to data prior to approval for release to manufacturing. This was a $250,000,000 company facing the prospect of losing 40% of their business if they did not get their act together.

In recent news, we heard about a company that manufactures baby furniture that had to recall one million baby cribs. Apparently these cribs were prone to collapse, and in at least one instance a baby died. To add insult to injury, they decided that the way to fix these defective cribs was to send out a repair kit. In their haste to get these repair kits out to the crib owners, they neglected to include instructions. We do not know exactly how one million baby cribs made it through the Engineering Process, the Approval Process, the Manufacturing Process, and/or the QA Process without this being found until a tragedy had occurred. It may be interesting to be able to eaves drop into the Board Room of this company as they investigate how this happened. It’s a safe bet to say that the process, if there is process in place, is broken.

These two stories bring to mind an old adage in product development. It’s the “One, Ten, One Hundred Rule”. If we find issues in Engineering, it costs us a dollar, If we find these issues in manufacturing, it costs us ten dollars, if we do not find these problems until product has been shipped, it costs us one hundred dollars, or more. Maybe even the reputation of  the company.

PDM/PLM solutions are designed to provide a secure environment for a company’s intellectual property, but the key is process. “Process is everything.” Complete visibility into the entire product development process is key to ensuring that the intended design is what has been manufactured and shipped.

Has your company experienced issues such as shipping to the wrong revision? What is your design process? Does everyone involved in the Engineering Change Process know what the entire process may be? Product Data Management is designed to reduce the risks related to new product introduction and can help us to drastically reduce the possibilities of being on the wrong end of the “One – Ten – One Hundred Rule”.

“For more information, contact InFlow Technology at www.inflow-tech.com

The Undocumented Documented "Document Manager DLL"

Huh, what was that? There is a little known feature of SolidWorks called the Document Manager Dll, and it is actually very well documented! A few years ago I ran across a posting about how programmers were able to extract custom property information from a SolidWorks part file without having SolidWorks open. As I looked into it further, I found that this was done by accessing a special dll named SwDocumentMgr.dll.

If you have SolidWorks installed, the actual dll can be found in the  C:\Program Files\Common Files\SolidWorks Shared directory.

So, what can you do with this little wonder object?
     - You can Get and Set the custom/configuration specific properties.
     - You can Get and Set references in an assembly file. (Very powerful, and scary!)
     - You can extract the parasolid (The solid model).
     - You can extract the preview Bitmap. Yes, that is pretty sweet!
     - You can extract eDrawing data.
     - You can extract data out into an xml format. (Basically, export xml of all sub parts and assemblies, etc.)

The documentation on its capabilities, API, and example code can be found in your SolidWorks directory. On my computer, it can be found here:
C:\Program Files\SolidWorks\api\swdocmgrapi.chm

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to use the dll. It is COM based, and simple to consume in your application.
If you are using vb6 or .Net, make sure you reference the SwDocumentMgr 200x type library.

Probably the biggest caveat to using the dll is that you need a key. Without the key the application will fail. I have read somewhere that any file after 2007 doesn't need a key. However, I haven't tried this. You can easily get a key though. Just email apisupport@solidworks.com. They will be glad to set you up with one. You may need to be an existing customer though.... not sure on that one.

With just a few lines of code, and more importantly, without starting (or even having) SolidWorks you can accomplish some very cool things!

' Get the Document Mgr application Object.
classfac = CreateObject("SwDocumentMgr.SwDMClassFactory")
DMapp = classfac.GetApplication("your_license_key")

' Get the document mypart.sldprt. Then grab the configurationmanager object for the default configuration
swDoc = DMapp.GetDocument("C:\MyPart.SLDPRT", swDmDocumentPart, True, e)
c = swDoc.ConfigurationManager.GetConfigurationByName("Default")

' Grab the custom property "MyDimension" for the Default configuration!
Debug.WriteLine(c.GetCustomProperty("MyDimension", e))

Contact Inflow Technology for more information.

Blank Drawing Data Cards????

Having issues getting information into a drawing data card even though the titleblock is filled out and the part data card is completely filled out?

Well PDMWorks Enterprise 2008 has the answer.

Just follow these steps:

Create an additional block/attribute mapping for just the drawing extension (slddrw). Use the block name ”$PRPSHEET” (note that it must be spelled with capital letters) and the attribute name should be the property you want to retrieve from the model, for example ”Description”. Note to keep the existing description custom property mapping for the drawing as well. (i.e. CustomProperty/Description).

NOTES

• The PDMWorks Enterprise SolidWorks add-in must be enabled.

• The linked properties will be copied / updated each time the drawing is saved from within SolidWorks.

The Importance of Product Data Management (Part 2)

Posted on behalf of John Holub.

QUESTION: How important is Process? Consistent process. Process, allowing Companies to define policy and procedures.

In part one of “The Importance of Product Data Management”, we discussed the importance of being able to find and reuse a company’s intellectual properties. Now that the data is secure and accessible to those that need it, when they need it, let’s put process in place to add controls to how we use/reuse this information.

A company that we once worked with called us in to assist them in revamping their Engineering Change Process. This was a manual process that they said had really become a bottleneck. Their goal was to try and automate the process with the aide of their new data management system. They felt that they could reduce the time that it took to process an engineering change by 20%. In Dollars, this broke down to about $1,000,000 per year. As we started to dig a bit deeper into the situation, there seemed to be an inordinate number of  Engineering Changes per week. We suggested that the Engineering Change bottleneck might be the result of a greater problem. We then asked about the design and approval processes. Our client went on to say that there have been a number of serious issues with regards to manufacturing product to the wrong revision. He also added that he had just received a “Nasty Gram” from their biggest customer. For the second time in 18 months, they had shipped to the wrong revision of the design. The customer stated that if this happened again they would take their business elsewhere. We asked what impact that would have on the company and we were told that this customer represented 40% of their annual business. We told the client that we certainly could help them improve their Engineering Change Process, but first let’s figure out how we save 40% of your company’s business.

The keys are consistent process and visibility of that process. Controlling access based on where designs are in their development process. Restricting access to certain areas in the organization until all approvals have been applied.

In the third and final installment of this series, we will discuss what I refer to as the “One – Ten – One Hundred Rule”.

“For more information, contact InFlow Technology at www.inflow-tech.com

PDMWorks Enterprise...Why so blue?

For those who use PDMWorks Enterprise, you may have noticed a time when all your folders turn from green to blue (see image on left).  You may think your PDM system is sad, and then you may become sad because you will quickly realize that you can't see the file data card, you can't search, and you can't see all the files.  Your menus will be disabled and even if you reboot, the folders will not go green again.  Weird, huh?

Well, the truth is that you are simply in offline mode.  This mode is available so users can work while not connected to the vault.  In Offline mode, users can be on a plane and be able to open any file that is in their cache.  For those who are unfamiliar with the cache, basically every file you ever view or edit is stored in your local cache.  While offline you can access these files, however you are limited to file access.  You cannot search the vault, view the data card, or generally do anything that requires an actual connection to the database.

So how does one get into "Offline Mode"?  Normally users stumble into offline mode accidently when they try to log into the vault when they are not on the network.  The login prompt will ask you if you want to Work Offline and, if you say "yes", the system will go offline and stay offline until you decide to "Work Online" again.  To go back online, just browse into the blue folders, and go to Tools > Work Online. (see image)

So, don't be sad.  Your PDM system is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.  Any questions about this, contact InFlow Technology.

The Importance of Product Data Management (Part 1)

Posted on behalf of John Holub

QUESTION: Is data/document management important? Is having “ALL” the documentation secure and easily retrievable key to your business, or just nice to have?

The first nineteen years of my career were in manufacturing. It was this background that prompted a change into the CAD/CAM Industry back in the Mid-80’s. My initial exposure to PDM was in 1989. The company that I worked for was instrumental in the development of IGOR. IGOR, named for the founder of Sykorsky Aircraft, was one of the very first production PDM Systems to come into existence. Eventually, the people involved with this PDM System got together, and using this knowledge and many lessons learned, developed a PLM System that is today has become one of the Enovia Solutions from Dassault Systemes. As we enter 2008, with all the advances in technology, companies are still wrestling with the same issues that faced Businesses over 20 years ago. “Get the right information, to the right people, at the right time”.

Some time back, a study was conducted that focused on Engineering Organizations. Like most of these reports, there were considerably more words than substance. However, a couple of the metrics really stood out: First, they determined that, on average, an Engineer spent more than 50% of his or her time searching for the material they needed to accomplish their job and, in some cases, as much as 70% of their time was spent finding what they needed. Secondly, once they determined that they had everything that was needed, they were still not certain that they had the right information. This problem still exists in the majority of product development companies today. Vital information and documents are stored randomly. It’s often times easier to redo a design rather than spend the time finding existing data for design reuse.

A company that I have worked with in the past, manufactures office furniture had this exact issue. They designed and manufactured a wide variety of office chairs, and each of these chairs used the same casters, yet it was easier to create a new part than to find the existing one for the next new chair that they designed. This resulted in the same part with 24 different part numbers. They got the job done, but this is hardly an efficient approach and not very economical from an inventory perspective.

Sounds like pretty basic stuff, right? So basic, in fact, that the justification for implementation of a PDM System can be based on getting the data secure, easily and quickly retrieving the data, and establishing methodologies for design reuse. This is really the ABC’s of PDM.

“For more information, contact InFlow Technology at www.inflow-tech.com