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A few months ago, we surveyed the market to understand the state of PDM. Our survey specifically targeted non-Bild users to truly understand the current sentiment. One of the questions we asked teams was: what’s one thing you wish you had that could help you most with your job? The most common answer: time. It’s no surprise that engineers have a lot on their plate, but when we dug deeper we found that most hardware engineers are spending nearly half their time on non-design related tasks. The most common ones included:
While teams may not realize the sunk cost of time management, these repetitive tasks can quickly become overwhelming, slow down design cycles, and introduce risk through manual data entry. There’s become a quick shift in the needs of data management systems from fast-paced teams: looking to do more with less, automating repetitive tasks, focusing on engineering efficiency. In this two part series, we’ll dive into these common time sinks and ways teams can solve these challenges through process innovation.
Mechanical engineers often face the daunting task of manually creating and maintaining part numbers and naming conventions. This process requires engineers to rely on spreadsheets or informal methods to ensure unique part numbers, which is prone to human error. Inconsistent naming conventions across teams can lead to confusion, duplicate parts, and unnecessary rework. Engineers frequently spend hours cross-checking part numbers to avoid duplication or incorrect associations. These inefficiencies can cascade into downstream processes, affecting procurement and manufacturing. Without a centralized system, teams struggle to standardize part identification, resulting in lost productivity and increased project costs.
In fact, most teams that we chat with spend time internally debating about whether to implement a “smart” or “dumb” schema. Current PDM and PLM systems solve this by providing a database to manage part numbering, offering options to ensure no repetitive part numbers exist and making sure part numbers are standardized across the organization. However, engineers are still spending time to ensure that their process is aligned with the rest of the teams when it comes to selecting the categories of the design to pull the appropriate part number. Or how about when we need to change part numbers, when and how does that happen? What happens if we accidentally pull a part number number and we don’t need it, what then? Most of these questions can be answered by an individual or two and then that information translates into 2 important pieces of information: 1) an internal document to inform team members and 2) a product requirements document for customizing existing solutions. Customizing existing PDM solutions is time consuming, requires nuanced domain knowledge, and is expensive.
Read more about part numbering in our blog post here.
Bill of Materials (BOM) creation is a fundamental yet complex task that engineers often manage manually when a PDM system is unavailable. Compiling BOMs typically involves manually extracting data from CAD files and inputting it into spreadsheets, which is both time-consuming and error-prone. Synchronizing BOMs across design, procurement, and manufacturing can become a logistical nightmare, especially when changes occur. Errors in BOMs, such as missing or outdated parts, can lead to costly production delays and rework. Additionally, manual BOM management limits visibility into changes, making it difficult to track and implement updates efficiently.
Have an integrated solution that creates a digital thread between CAD and different solutions. Legacy PDM systems can create BOMs but it’s often challenging updating those BOMs and then sending the BOM downstream into PLM and ERP systems. Similar to customizing your part numbering schema, creating middleware to manage BOM information can be time consuming and expensive as they are normally serviced by VARs. Scale your business needs with PDM systems that have in-built Integrations into your tools or provide an easy to use API that can be serviced quickly.
At Bild, teams can instantly create BOMs and keep design metadata instantly synchronized. When designs change in the PDM vault, BOMs automatically are redlined and can be resynced, reducing the need to manually transfer this information over. Teams eliminate errors and spend more time designing with BOMs managed with Bild’s PDM vault. BOMs can run through a full review process and finally can be released and exported into a variety of formats. Bild’s BOMs integrate downstream with various PLM and ERP systems to keep cross-functional teams up-to-date on the latest and greatest.
Continue reading the next part here!