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by Stephanie Neil, MA Editorial Staff   | Abstract: | The digital factory has been stalled by cost, culture, complexity, and an inability to close the loop between product design and factory floor control. But that's about to change. |
Bob Klem has seen a lot change in the 30 years he has been with General Motors. But one of the most significant events in the manufacturer's operational history is happening right now. The company, he says, is in the midst of a global transformation that emphasizes a new kind of vehicle. This vehicle is not a new automobile; rather, it is a change agent — a driving force, so to speak — that will move the 100-year-old company into its next century. For the past 10 years, Klem, GM's Information System and Services global director for manufacturing engineering, has been working with his European counterpart, Richard Woodhead, on developing digital toolkits that will alter the way GM manufactures its cars and trucks. The toolkits define the workflows and sequencing standards for building each of GM's products. For example, there are about 4,000 weld points on an automobile, each varying in size, the type of weld gun required, and the duration of the weld based on stress analysis. A digital model, residing in a global component library, standardizes the way welds are made and how parts go together, regardless of where in the world a part is built. The toolkits, which Klem develops and Woodhead fine-tunes for each site around the globe, represent a virtual model of engineering designs, manufacturing assets, and validation methods. "Once you have all of these three segments aligned, you get a high degree of reuse of the digital data, so you are not constantly reprocessing the plant," Klem says. [Click to continue] |