In the electronic age, the term "digital factory" may sound like a game played on Wii, where manufacturing is simulated in an animated 3D model and points are scored based on the number of widgets produced. But people in manufacturing, such as Matt Haugh, sales and marketing director at BigToys, a maker of commercial playground equipment, understand the digital factory's significance as a business tool, not a toy.
Haugh experienced a key aspect of the digital factory concept five years ago when his company made a game-changing decision. BigToys, which has been in business for 40 years, had been selling products made exclusively from wood. However, when customers started asking for steel-based products, the company had to make a rapid transition in both its materials and its manufacturing model.
BigToys, which had been outsourcing production, brought everything in-house, turning its Olympia, WA, shipping center into a machine-milling production house. The company also invested in computer-aided design software to determine how to reconfigure every component and part so that the steel footprint would be identical to the wood structure. And the company leveraged its software investment, which included three-dimensional (3D) modeling and visualization, to ensure that the virtual version could be physically manifested using CNC machines on the shop floor.
Within 11 months of embarking on this new business model, the company successfully transformed its product line from wood to steel while minimizing waste.