Foreword
Mr. Kentaro Kizaki Nikkei Monozukuri Editor, Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. Amidst the intensifying competition revolving beyond national borders in the manufacturing industry, what is the competitive edge required for manufacturers to survive? Competitive edge can be visible and invisible. “Visible competitive edge” means it is visible to customers, such as new mechanisms of products, ma- terials, machining technologies, etc. It can also be called product innovation. In contrast, “invisible competitive edge” is competitive edge in the business process, in other words, competitive edge created by innovation of design and production processes, or by the establishment of mechanisms for manufacturing quality prod-ucts quickly and inexpensively by the introduction of IT or human resource devel-opment.
Indispensable to this “invisible competitive edge” is no doubt the use of 3D for the design and manufacturing processes. With the growing use of 3D CAD in de- sign departments, 3D data-based manufacturing is becoming more and more com-mon. In design departments, 3D data is used as the material for verifying design, and in manufacturing departments, 3D data is used for machining and automatic assembly. 3D data is also used for enhancing the manufacturing process to facili- tate the work of assembly operators. Procurement and marketing departments can also use 3D data for their procurement, sales, and logistics activities as predictors.
In whichever case, 3D data is a tool which supports in ways invisible to customers of the manufacturing industry. The full and thorough use of 3D data will reinforce invisible competitive edge. According to Professor Takahiro Fujimoto of the Uni-versity of Tokyo (Graduate School of Economics), “MONOZUKURI” (manufac-turing or making in Japanese) is the transcription of design information onto media.
He says, for example, an automobile is the transcription of design concepts of a vehicle onto a 0.8-mm-thick metal sheet. Important here is the fact that satisfying the customer is not the medium of metal sheet but the design information itself. And the means of conveying this design information from designers to production engineers are drawings or 3D data, etc.
Japanese Drawings: Designed to Facilitate Production Technology Plans
At the moment (2007), most 3D CAD software products used in design depart-ments are from Europe or the USA. The use of 3D CAD enables designers to define 3D models precisely as well as convey shapes accurately to those applying production technologies. 3D CAD is very clear-cut, nothing is vague, so it tries to provide all the information required in the downstream process. This was why CAD was developed in Europe and the USA. On the other hand, the aim of draw-ings used in Japan has been for designers to relay design details to production engineers. The process of preparing these drawings consisted only of reconstruct- ing design information so that production engineers can understand the informa- tion better. So the production engineers would look at the drawings, try to under-stand the intent of designers, and work on the production process.
This creativity at the production side is what strengthens the foundations of the Japanese manu- facturing industry. In manufacturing, 3D CAD data is, needless to say, very useful. There are very keen efforts to realize “drawing-less” manufacturing by digitizing information transmission and abolishing drawings. However, it is risky to simply replace drawings with 3D CAD data. This is because the meanings of drawings and 3D data are totally different in production engineering. If the strengths of the manufacturing industry to date are to be made use of, it is necessary to use 3D CAD data but, at the same time, apply a method which will reliably convey designer intent such as tolerance and important details to the pro- duction process.
Such a reliable method would be lightweight 3D data as repre- sented by XVL. Lightweight 3D data should not be taken as the simplified version of CAD data, because not only production engineering departments but also vari- ous departments can access this lightweight 3D data to learn about design intent. For this, large-scale assembly data must be viewable and easily accessed by virtu- ally anyone.
Japan Leads the World in Use of 3D Data
Japan clearly leads the world in the use of 3D data. Lightweight 3D data XVL was developed by the Japanese company Lattice Technology (hereafter referred to as Lattice) and is growing more and more popular. Other lightweight 3D data soft- ware include Fujitsu’s VPS and Digital Process’ VridgeR. Though differing in the functions provided, Japan has pioneered the use of 3D data software. This can
probably be attributed to the sophisticated skills of users of XVL and 3D tools, in other words, production engineering departments of Japanese companies.
It is natural for Japanese industry to reinforce its manufacturing strengths through IT. As European and American CAD software have already penetrated deeply into the Japanese market, there is not much value in developing Japanese CAD systems now. So in order to strengthen the Japanese manufacturing industry, we need software that matches Japan’s manufacturing culture. One such software would be software enhancing collaboration between design departments and ma-nufacturing departments such as production engineering. In order for Japan to carry out concurrent engineering the Japanese way, it will need mechanisms for production-related staff to participate in the design process from an early stage.
This would be design review using 3D data as a tool for communication between different departments. From the perspective of the partnership between design and manufacturing, design reviews embody the bottom-up approach where optimization proceeds by trial and error. In contrast, European and American software vendors propose the concept of realizing overall optimization all at once, called Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). PLM is a top-down approach where attempts are made to manage and use information in the product lifecycle from upstream to down- stream to enhance the competitive edge. In reality, this approach for overnight reforms is sometimes difficult.
When attempts are made to resolve a big problem, it is usually difficult to decide where to start from. It is therefore more realistic to start by accumulating CAD data and lightweight 3D data in the company’s com- mon database so that people requiring information can access it. Once more and more people are using the data, then it is time to enhance software and hardware. The fact that lightweight 3D data such as XVL allows such a bottom-up approach makes it advantageous in reinforcing Japan’s strengths.
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