Mechanical engineering companies and suppliers require consistent strategies and processes when digitizing CAD data in product configuration. Because customer wishes and their requirements for products are becoming more and more individual, this makes their standardization and modularization necessary at the same time. Cideon Conify has the right solution for this.
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25.03.2023/XNUMX/XNUMX | the interdisciplinary configuration is picking up speed in the industry. And that's a good thing, because it meets the customer's need to offer individual products at manageable costs. A high degree of automation goes hand in hand with a deep integration of all processes – including the engineering of the orders. For configurable articles with an engineering component, however, this is not yet the state of the art in large parts of the industry.
The company Cideon, member of the Friedhelm Loh Group, presents at Hannover Messe 2023 a solution with which the varied product configuration experiences more efficient order processing. With Cideon Conify the configured product, the digital twin in the process, is automatically created as a CAD data set and then saved in a PDM-compliant manner. Cideon Conify thus supports offer and order processing for products with many variants. The configuration in sales goes hand in hand with the automated CAD data, the order-specific development and the parts lists.
This enables order engineering to process customer orders with adjustments using only minimal additional effort capture. Order processing and production thus have clear, consistent documents, parts lists and work plans at their disposal. The result is a standardized, digital process from the company's sales to delivery with the highest degree of automation for the customer.
The continuous process in the order processing of goods with many variants must be entire value chain extend. All departments are involved: Product development, sales, order-specific design through to delivery. Each of the processes involved is about consistent data management - without redundancies and detours.
The product development already lays the basis for efficient order processing through a well thought-out product standardization in modular. These are to be mapped in product configurators. They are also the prerequisite for creating the appropriate CAD models. This is the starting point for all further steps in processing the customer order.
Using this data and systems, sales can create convincing offers with high relevance, which can be enriched with drawings, visualizations and CAD models. Cideon Conify automatically converts the existing parametric CAD data into CAD-neutral product data. This is usually done in a simplified and clear manner at first.
If an order is placed, the whole thing is explained in more detail. When creating the order, you can use the parametric data detailed assemblies to be generated. These allow a complete, variant-specific creation of article masters and parts lists. In doing so, we pay close attention to the reuse of historical components and assemblies.
If, as usual, order-specific adjustments are necessary, the employees in order design can find the CAD data pre-generated by Cideon Conify in the PDM/PLM system. This process step results in further article lists and parts list data, which are used further in company processes via the respective interface. This forms the basis for further value creation up to delivery.
Cideon's consultants accompany their customers on their way to a consistent configuration process. Optimization potentials can be identified, for example, as part of a Configuration Discovery Workshops be determined. The experts work with the participants to develop the target image using a representative demo model. Based on this, the first concrete implementations can be planned. This clearly defines the path to lean order processing for products with many variants.
The modular concept of Cideon Conify is open to extensions and also allows the integration of different systems. Configurators such as SAP and FDU (Autodesk) are supported for sales. CAD software are good examples SolidWorks from Dassault Systèmes and Autodesk Inventor. In the PDM area, the focus is on Autodesk Vault and SAP ECTR. However, other connections can also be implemented.
And finally ... Cideon Conify takes configuration processes to a new level. The throughput times of a project from the first inquiry to the placement of an order decrease significantly. The quality of the offers increases. Recurring activities can be reduced.