Agile manufacturing

Agile Manufacturing represents an effective way to develop a competitive advantage in today’s fast-moving marketplace. Turn speed and agility into a competitive advantage.

For companies manufacturing industrial products, Agile Manufacturing can reduce delivery time, reduce cost and eliminate errors. So how is this possible?

Agile Manufacturing makes extensive use of product standardisation, modular products and software tools which allow the rapid configuration of products. The ability to select any product configuration without delay has a significant impact on reducing delivery time and cost.

Agile benefits

Consider for a minute the implications for your own business if any configuration of the product could be instantaneously available to both sales and production whenever required. Furthermore, the information is detailed, accurate and always current. Agile has a considerable impact on many businesses;

  • Products are configured to customers exact specifications.
  • Customers receive detailed proposals within minutes
  • Quotations are technically and commercially accurate
  • Change when it occurs, it can be dealt with immediately with negligible impact on the business

Further engineering is no longer required, therefore

  • Delivery time reduces
  • Project delivery costs reduce
  • Improve project margins
  • Do more business with the increased capacity

 

Implementing Agile

Agile is a process of continuous improvement. The process starts with understanding your customer’s requirements. The product is disassembled using a process of product standardisation, extracting from it reusable modular components. These modular components define all current and future requirements for the product.

Modularity Graph

 

It is possible to assemble components manually. However, a product configurator provides increased speed and accuracy. The product configurator uses embedded rules to ensure valid selections are made, eliminating a further source of error.Agile Flow Diagram

Data is attached to each configurable module which is available during the configuration process. Typically, the data consists of cost, part numbers, weights and other useful information. The configurator dynamically reports on summary data such as total cost, total weight and possibly lead time for the product. Create a customer quotation at the touch of a button.

After configuring modular products, it is relatively straightforward to automate other downstream processes such as building a 3D computer-aided-design (CAD) model or passing records directly into a manufacturing system.