Operations process management software provider iBASEt today announced the next generation of Solumina, its flagship product, which features expanded interoperability with other enterprise applications, including ERP and PLM.
The Solumina G6 software suite, which contains process engineering and planning, manufacturing execution (MES), and quality management modules for manufacturing and MRO (maintenance, repair, and overhaul) operations, now adds Web services interfaces to facilitate the type of integration with PLM and other applications that iBASEt's aerospace and defense manufacturing customers are seeking these days.
"There's a notion that in aerospace, PLM plays a much bigger role than in other manufacturing industries," said Conrad Leiva, vice president of product marketing at iBASEt. "The depth of BOMs [bills of materials] can go 20 levels deep."
The new version of Solumina also includes enhancements for end users, such as an animated, graphical 3D interface that displays work instructions in a slide show format, as well as IT features, such as support for SQL Server, JBoss, WebSphere, and NetWeaver platforms.
In aerospace & defense manufacturing — a complex, discrete sector with long cycle times — engineering changes often happen during the production process and have to be integrated on the fly, so the information has to be accessible in real time.
The G6 release of Solumina contains intuitive wizards that guide workers through the delicate manufacturing processes typical in A&D, Leiva said. "Products that go into space really require 100% reliability." Solumina addresses this requirement by "holding workers' hands" with wizards that guide them through change processes triggered by PLM systems that are tied into the application, Leiva said.
"Our customers can't afford to work out all [the design] kinks after a production cell has been running for several months," he said. Since there's high value in the types of assemblies A&D manufacturers produce, there's not much scrap. Instead, "there's a continuous process of work and rework to bring a product up to spec."
The Solumina interface is tied into dynamic object and model changes from the engineering department. To capture engineering changes and product updates on the fly, Solumina shows production workers a real-time display of the necessary information, as opposed to their having to locate and open a static Word document for work instructions, for example, in a separate application.
Other wizards group work orders according to their progress status. The system also sends automatic notifications when a work order is changed or placed on hold, and it provides traceability for such changes.
"By the time a work order is finished, you know which engineering changes were implemented, when, and by whom," Leiva said. The functionality goes beyond just a genealogy footprint, he said, and involves all production issues, including which changes were in the product, which of those changes might have affected other assemblies or the overall assembly, and a thorough history of who did what.
Another enhancement is that a user can log out of the system and then log back in to find the session restored where the user left off. Solumina G6 also includes other caching functions that separate static and dynamic content, which can distinguish between locked objects and objects in edit mode so that each section of an application is refreshed independently, as appropriate.
Leiva said the new release of Solumina also contains more illustrations and less text, a feature geared toward outsourced work, which can be interrupted by language barriers. Applications for A&D also have to be more intuitive in general so that a new, younger workforce can come up to speed on processes quickly.
On the IT side, the addition of JEE as Solumina's business application layer allows for more flexibility for expanding and adding to the application, Leiva said.
Although iBASEt is often viewed as an MES provider, the company prefers the term operations process management (OPM) to MES. "As a software provider, we tend to get lumped into MES, but there are pros and cons for that," Leiva said. "We do execution, but we offer specific functionality for A&D customers, and a concentration on process management," whereas "a lot of MES is focused on the plant — tracking status in the plant, machine utilization, OEE, etc.," he said. "We're really focused on the products and processes within the plant."
Another contrast with traditional MES applications is that Solumina is "not about monitoring yield, etc.; we're really about handling exceptions and making it all come together and making sure that the as-built matches the as-designed [product]," he said.
iBASEt is actively involved in manufacturing standards efforts, including OAGIS and ISO95, Leiva said, as well as interoperability work with larger enterprise software vendors, including SAP and Oracle.
"It's particularly important, as a niche player, to be able to integrate with ERP," Leiva said. "We're viewed as the guy with the smaller footprint compared to the ERP system, and want our customers to be at ease about integration."
Leiva said iBASEt is working closely with PLM vendors, including Dassault Systemes, as well, on even tighter integration between manufacturing and PLM systems.