Tata power case study in Express computers

Tata Power shortens design cycle
The Strategic Electronics Division of the Tata Power Company has been successful in improving co-ordination between its design and manufacturing teams by using Wrench PLM. Vinod Yadav, Deputy Manager of the division, recalls the implementation of the project.

The Strategic Electronics Division (SED) of the Tata Power Company focusses on the aerospace and defence market in India. The design and development centre of the company is located at Mumbai, and the manufacturing division is at Bangalore. There has to be proper co-ordination between the two teams to excel in whatever defence project we take up.

Problems without PLM
The division’s product designs are an equal mix of Electronic Computer Aided Design (ECAD) and Mechanical CAD (MCAD). Prior to going in for a PLM solution, the designs that were generated at the Design Centre in Mumbai were transferred to manufacturing as hardcopies. The manufacturing unit had a legacy system which was used for storing component-related information of the equipment being manufactured and the details of the Bill Of Material (BOM). The manufacturing process could only be triggered once the parts and BOMs were re-entered into the system from hardcopies, and drawings checked and controlled in the records room. This used to take about two to three weeks for a small project. Also, the time taken from initiating a change to closing on it used to be more than a week. If any design issue was raised for a particular design drawing, it used to take a lot of time as the real-time sharing of design information between the design and manufacturing teams wasn’t there.

Another challenge was the visibility of controlled documents at the design centre. Since the design team had no visibility of product data, part re-usability was very low. There was also no common data repository as there was no common pool where design- and the manufacturing-related information could be entered.

Making a decision
The initiative to deploy a PLM solution was taken by our division’s Chief Executive Officer Rahul Chaudhry in 2004. He spearheaded the initiative to IT-enable the processes at SED in order to gain tighter collaboration between design and manufacturing, and to shorten the design cycle. This triggered the implementation of PLM and ERP solutions at SED.

After a detailed evaluation process, SED decided to go in for Wrench from CADD Solutions as the PLM solution. Oracle Applications was picked as the ERP system. Besides Wrench, we had also evaluated Team Centre from EDS. We decided to zero in on Wrench because it had the capability to manage ECAD as well as MCAD data in a seamless environment. Wrench offered good visualisation capabilities for ECAD and MCAD data, and supported electrical and mechanical BOMs. Through the visualisation capabilities it is possible for us to open any of our ECAD or MCAD designs without hassle. We also felt that, as compared to other PLM packages, Wrench was flexible enough to be customised as per our needs. In addition, we found that WRENCH had the capability to integrate well with Oracle Applications. Wrench was also being used by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), which has a design and the manufacturing line similar to ours; we knew that the product had been very successful at BEL.

Slow data migration, but smooth thereafter
We successfully implemented Wrench in about eight months. The implementation exercise began in January 2005, and the product went live by mid-September. The implementation team consisted of five members. One of the major challenges we faced during the implementation was in importing data to the Wrench database. We had to manually enter details, which consisted of a design repository of around 60,000 parts that was 15 years old. Cleaning up this data took almost three months. However, once this was done and the requirements finalised from our side, the delivery of customised software took hardly a month. After testing this baseline software, suggestions were given to add value to the users.

A PLM in time
We have seen some significant benefits after the Wrench implementation.

A data repository that aids in collaboration: A central repository of data has been created which is visible across the design and manufacturing teams spread across Mumbai and Delhi. This has led to improved collaboration between the two. After the Wrench implementation, we have seen that there has been an increase in the re-use of design components as the older product designs can be accessed instantly and used for some other project having similar requirements.

A shorter design cycle: There has also been a substantial reduction in the design cycle as all datasheets and specifications of parts used in the earlier designs are available online and can be accessed by both the teams. Earlier, there was no co-ordination between the teams as design and manufacturing-related data was not available in realtime.

Faster BOM and order execution: We have also observed in the one month after implementation that the time taken to create a BOM (consisting of both electrical and mechanical parts) has come down from 3-4 hours to just 20 minutes. Wrench has also facilitated a system-driven workflow for streamlining the release of manufacturing documents. This has eliminated the time taken to manually enter parts, BOM and control document releases into the legacy manufacturing system.

All this has helped in easier change initiation as the teams can share designs at the same time. This has resulted in the faster execution of engineering change orders—the time has been cut down from six to two days. Once the designs are released in PLM, the data flows directly into ERP where the manufacturing cycle can be initiated to start the manufacturing cycle.
— As told to Abhinav Singh

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L&T-Mchneal case study in Express computers

Shrinking the product design cycle

The LTM business unit of Larsen & Toubro has shrunk its product design cycles by adopting PLM. T M Mohamed Ibrahim, Executive, R&D and Engineering at the unit, explains the need for a product lifecycle management solution.
 
The importance of engineering drawings in heavy manufacturing cannot be ignored. It was necessary for L&T’s LTM business unit to have effective control over its engineering with the aim of speeding up production and reducing wastage. We were facing a lot of problems with regard to the management of engineering drawings. During the initial phase, when we had not gone in for computerisation, we had to physically manage our engineering drawings, which was a nightmare for all concerned. We went in for computerisation around eight years back, but our problems did not end there. We had to make a number of copies of the original drawings and feed them into different PCs. There was a lot of confusion with regard to the drawings—revised versions of drawings went unnoticed, and wrong drawings were supplied to the manufacturing plant leading to wrong production and loss of time and money.

Lack of security

	T M Mohamed Ibrahim, Executive R&D and Engineering, L & T's LTM Business Unit

With so many drawings on different PCs, there was the problem of sharing drawings, and anybody could access these drawings, resulting in a lack of security. Thus, there was a chance of sensitive engineering drawings being accessed by unauthorised people and landing up in the hands of our competitors. Because the engineering drawings could not be shared across departments, a lot of specifications linked to a particular drawing could not be shared, resulting in the generation of inaccurate engineering designs. In case anybody wanted to see a drawing he had to physically verify and take printouts of the drawings. Due to the inability to share drawings, final approval took a lot of time—it used to take 3-4 days as the drawing had to be printed from various departments.

The chosen one
We decided to go in for a PLM solution to reduce these problems. We had a rigorous evaluation process to select the PLM solution. We were looking for a solution which could be customised as per our requirements. We have a unique bill of material (BOM) where we store standard design information for our different customers. The BOM is linked to our material resource planning (MRP) system which we developed in-house. We wanted a solution that could be integrated with these two core applications seamlessly without us having to change our systems to accommodate the product. We also had the problem of finding a product which catered to single product development as we are not a mass product manufacturing firm, and because most PLM products are tuned to cater to mass product development. One product of ours takes a few months to be completed owing to the enormous size of our projects. We found that Wrench PLM from CADD Solutions met our requirements; we were also able to alter the specification of Wrench to suit our requirements very precisely.

	About the LTM unit
	The LTM business unit is part of the heavy engineering division of Larsen & Toubro, and offers a wide range of rubber and plastics processing machinery and custom-engineered products. The unit commenced its operations in 1974 at Chennai under the name L&T-McNeil Limited, a joint venture between L&T and McNeil Akron Inc. of the US, the latter being the originator of the popular Bag-O-Matic tyre curing presses. The interests of McNeil Akron have now been fully bought over by L&T, and the Chennai facility functions as a self-reliant strategic business unit of L&T. The unit generates around Rs 150 crore annually. Its machinery is supplied to tyre manufacturing companies all over the world, but particularly in Europe.

Long implementation

The implementation had to be carefully planned. It took us six months, from end-2002 onwards. We went live in May 2003. During the implementation, each and every system had to be checked, and the data-flow pertaining to the drawings had to be accurate. We also needed to search for relevant archived drawings and put them into the system as there were critical reference drawings that were needed from time to time. Tracing sheets also had to be manually scanned and entered into the system. We did all this successfully and went ahead with the system.

Prototyping 50 percent faster
After the implementation of Wrench, the time taken to manufacture a prototype has halved. Due to the effective co-ordination of the design team, it now takes 4-6 months to develop a prototype, something which earlier used to take 8-12 months. All the old drawings are now systematically stored and their retrieval is faster, unlike the pre-implementation scenario where it took one or two days to retrieve a drawing from different departments. This has made referring to drawings very easy. The usage of irrelevant drawings has also been done away with completely, and now accurate drawings are churned across departments. Wrench has also brought in a highly secured environment as people cannot copy and print a particular engineering design without the prior permission of the design department. Approval of engineering designs has also been streamlined since everything is done seamlessly, the designs are available across the departments on their respective PCs, and the approval takes only a few minutes which earlier used to take a couple of days. We have taken 25 user licences of Wrench for carrying out different tasks.

	After the implementation of Wrench, the time taken to manufacture a prototype has halved. Due to the effective co-ordination of the design team, it now takes 4-6 months to develop a prototype, something which earlier used to take 8-12 months

Integrated with ERP

Ever since we moved to a new ERP package from our earlier in-house-built package in 2004, Wrench has integrated with the new system without any problem though we had to re-customise the whole thing. Since Wrench is looking after the engineering design management as per our expectations, we have been able to save on at least 20 licences from J D Edwards for our design engineers. We are also planning to have a search engine on top of the Wrench, which will help us to locate engineering design drawings within the system, and also help in faster design development.

—As told to Abhinav Singh

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VA TECH case study in Express computers

Re-engineering the PLM way
VA TECH WABAG has brought in the desired changes in its engineering design cycles by using Wrench PLM. V Venkatasamy, its Senior Manager, Quality & IT, and Coleridge Shelley, its Manager, Planning, share details about the deployment with Abhinav Singh

Coleridge Shelley  

Being involved in planning, finance, putting up plants and after-sales service, we at VA TECH WABAG, an EPC (Engineering Procurement Construction) company, were generating more than 1,200 engineering design documents during the design phase of turnkey projects. Our goal was to capitalise on our engineering assets and manage them in a comprehensive manner. Most of these documents pass through multiple internal groups staffed by engineers from several disciplines before being sent to customers for final approval. The customer pays for the documentation, which makes tracking and managing these documents a primary concern for us. 

We wanted to have an online system that controlled our engineering designs. Earlier, we had managed our designs independently through a software tool developed inhouse, called the Document Control System. Unfortunately, there was no integration with the different departments involved in engineering design. Documents had to be physically (or via e-mail) routed to various users, including customers, and this had to be tracked across project design cycles. The result was a timeconsuming, inefficient and error-prone system. For example, a typical drawing generated by the mechanical engineering team would take about 15 days to go through one revision. This meant that information-sharing across departments was non-existent. There was no data integrity, archival was a big challenge, and there were security issues because of the lack of a proper security policy within the Document Control System.

The manual workflow and lack of standardisation across teams was a hurdle. Although ISO procedures were officially put in place, internal departments still used their own heterogeneous processes that had been evolved over the years. Even the document templates in use were not standardised. The team had to work closely with individual departments to collate, identify and zero in on a set of standardised templates. These final templates were incorporated into the product Wrench when it was implemented.

Wrench chosen
We were looking for a PLM solution that could do document management and archival, and had the requisite security parameters. Online project management was a must. After evaluating various PLM products, we found that the online project management capabilities of Wrench were the best of the bunch, and that it could be perfectly integrated with the platforms that we had deployed.

Getting data into Wrench
The implementation, which started in September 2004, concluded with the system going online in January 2005. About five people were involved. All the drawings from the in-house solution, all engineering assets, had to be entered into Wrench. Most of these were scattered across departments. The master data, including document details, employee details, man-hour estimates, structure and project details had to be imported into Wrench from the in-house document management system.

Legacy data such as soft copies of existing files, i.e. drawings and document files, were imported into the Wrench archive using a bulk import programme provided by CADD Solutions (Wrench is a PLM product of CADD Solutions). The first phase focussed on understanding the various business processes that were in use, and creating a more streamlined approach which fulfilled the objective of each process. The second phase addressed the actual implementation of these processes across the enterprise, and revolved around ensuring that Wrench could integrate seamlessly with our in-house developed system, which included Microsoft Project and Primavera.
 
The team from CADD interacted with each department and put together a cross-functional implementation team staffed by key users from departments and the quality control manager (who also doubled as the IT manager of the company). The CADD Solutions project manager then studied each individual user’s work process to understand the real-time requirements. Based on these interactions, the project manager then ensured that the final workflow procedures that were incorporated into the product not only adhered to ISO 9000 standards, but were also practical and realistic. CADD ensured that this was communicated to and accepted by all users.

RTC to the rescue
Post-implementation, Wrench has given our project managers the freedom to focus on customer management without worrying about the status of those all-important documents, reports and engineering drawings. Once a drawing is made, it is possible to monitor the progress of each drawing in the system as the project progresses. Drawings and the data are available online, and can be shared by many people in real-time. Be it specifications, datasheets, 2D and 3D drawings or task status reports, Wrench automatically tracks, updates and even alerts relevant engineers who are making those drawings. With respect to project status reports and project plans, project managers can now identify potential bottlenecks well ahead of time, thus avoiding time-consuming design changes which in turn could have impacted the project delivery dates and the overall execution quality.

Wrench automatically identifies and escalates alerts in case the designs are running behind schedule, and alerts all concerned parties regarding potentially-critical tasks. Because everything is automated, the entire process has become significantly more reliable. The planning manager can track all the engineering tasks online without interacting personally with individual users. He can also follow up pending tasks online. Users can update the status of pending documents as and when a document is completed. The planning manager and users are automatically intimated about critical and near-critical tasks.

Extending Wrench
We want the Wrench system to be extended beyond our organisation so that our customers can access the project status. We also want to ensure that our project managers can access the PLM solution even from a cyber café in case they are travelling.

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