Given the worldwide economic recession, manufacturers are under pressure to become more resourceful and agile. As a result, companies are starting to take a serious look at the value of incorporating more simulation and visualization into design-to-production processes so that they can see and test production setups before actually making new production investments.
Technology vendors are taking note and introducing products that move manufacturing closer to the virtual reality of the digital factory.
While industry experts say we are still some years away from technology tools that support a soup-to-nuts digital manufacturing environment, many vendors are coming up with point solutions that offer ways to close the loop between the design of a product and actual production. Vendors are finding, however, that integrating those point solutions into a unified whole is a challenge, in part because the software programs that drive the different domains — CAD and control — usually haven't been designed to communicate with one another. In addition, an integrated digital factory environment must be able to manage the information that's generated by the different applications involved. That's why product lifecycle management (PLM) is an important application to include in the digital factory discussion.
Automation and PLM leader Siemens is one vendor that is going back to the drawing board to create a turnkey solution that incorporates all of these technologies in a tightly integrated offering. Meanwhile PLM software provider Dassault Systèmes, which has partnerships with Rockwell Automation, Omron Corp., and Schneider Electric on the control side, as well as iBASEt and Intercim on the manufacturing operations management side, is offering manufacturers multiple digital factory entry points.