Customer References - TRI-M-COADVANCED ENGINEERING SOFTWARE HELPS METAL FABRICATOR TURN OUT PARTS WITH SPEED AND PRECISIONWritten by Vic Goodpasture in July 94 At 4:30 on a recent afternoon, a senior engineer at an East Coast manufacturer sent a computer file of a prototype sheet-metal part over the Internet to a Southern California fabricator. By 9:00 the next morning, the completed part was sitting on his desk. In the past, it would have taken three weeks to fabricate the part. But with powerful desktop computers and advanced engineering software, the item was completed in only three hours. It was then shipped overnight to its designer. "We're turning around prototypes so fast, it's making our customers' heads spin," says Nathan Cline, engineering and MIS manager for Tri-M-Co, a high-tech sheet-metal fabricator in San Marcos, Calif. "They can't understand how we're doing it. Their other vendors want three to five weeks." The company specializes in producing production and prototype sheet-metal parts for customers. Although most customers don't require the urgency of the East Coast designer, the fact that Tri-M-Co can provide such service when a company finds itself in a time-sensitive jam hasn't gone unnoticed. Because the sheet-metal fabricator can complete jobs so quickly -- normal turnaround is about 10 days -- new customers are lining up at its doors.
Cline says Tri-M-Co's ability to turn jobs around so fast is attributable to Hewlett-Packard Precision Engineering/SheetAdvisor, a solid modeling-based sheet metal application that offers a new approach which integrates manufacturing methodology into the design process. SheetAdvisor's sophisticated tools and databases link the customer's requirements to the factory floor in an uninterrupted chain. SheetAdvisor is a part of HP's Precision Engineering Software offerings. With computer solid models replacing cumbersome blueprints, 90 percent of the front-end time is eliminated, Cline says. The software generates a flat pattern and downloads the information to another computer through a CAM interface. Workers on the floor call up the information and can begin making the part. "I don't understand why everybody doesn't have this," says Kirk Caldwell, general manager of Tri-M-Co. "We've more than tripled the efficiency of our engineering staff allowing us to dramatically decrease lead-time. The SheetAdvisor identifies errors in design before a part goes to the manufacturing floor. That saves both us and our customers a lot of money and time by eliminating the need for redesign and remanufacture."
The software saves Tri-M-Co time by eliminating the need to calculate the processes and methodologies for generating a flat pattern. Determining a metal's stretch factors and bend gains used to take hours: SheetAdvisor will generate the flat in less than four seconds. And the representation is accurate: designers and engineers need not worry about accidentally transposed digits or other miscalculations. The data integrate seamlessly with Tri-M-Co's CAM software to compile a work and auto-tool list. The company is sufficiently impressed with its SheetAdvisor software that it has purchased six additional workstations to loan to current and potential customers in order to enhance and develop business relationships. This allows customers to design their parts with the software and send them directly to Tri-M-Co without the need for blueprints. "The cost savings we accrued by having customers design this way pays for the units," Caldwell explains. "We don't need to spend time finding and fixing errors. Questions of interpretation are eliminated. This type of methodology is so beneficial to all parties involved, I hope our customers will see the value and buy one. It's going to help them design parts with greater accuracy, efficiency and speed. It's going to help me produce and manufacture the same way." Hewlett Packard's Precision Engineering/SheetAdvisor links computer-generated sheet-metal parts with CAM software that allows Tri-M-Co's state-of-the-art machines to make exact copies of the engineer's design. One key feature of SheetAdvisor is cost estimation. The costing module can be configured a number of different ways. The feature allows Tri-M-Co, or any customer using the application, to determine how much a particular part will cost. The type and size of material, and the amount of work each part requires are instantly calculated. The module is particularly useful in cutting the costs of production by assisting the engineer or designer in eliminating unnecessary work. In one job, the flat pattern of a satellite modem chassis generated by SheetAdvisor identified an area that would require laser cutting, which is a very expensive process. Raising the edge up a tiny fraction of an inch, eliminated the need for that process. A quick look at the updated solid model showed the adjustment didn't affect the functionality of the modem chassis. "I used to spend a lot of time quoting jobs for people," Caldwell says. "It was time consuming and emotional. The costing module shows customers exactly how we derive our prices. They can submit accurate budgets months before they actually have the job done. The most quantifiable savings is the fact that they design around our tooling library; particularly around standard tools that we currently have loaded in the turret. By choosing our most common tools, our customers save additional money because we don't have to charge them set-up time." SheetAdvisor's tooling library lists all of Tri-M-Co's tools, along with other tools available elsewhere. Any customer designing a part with Tri-M-Co's tools knows the fabricator will be able to do the job without delay. For all of the software's power, Cline finds the program very easy to use. For example, dedicated sheet metal commands combined with intuitive tools and easy-to-read menus allow the user to concentrate on the design. When designing a part, Cline scrolls down the tool list and clicks on the one he wants with his mouse. The solid model instantly reflects the selection. Interactive shaded viewing makes the model easy to view and nine dials on the keyboard allow Cline to rotate the object in any direction.
"I had apprehensions working in UNIX because I was familiar only with DOS and Windows," he says. "But HP VUE and SheetAdvisor were very easy to learn. Ease of use was one of the most important criteria we considered while reviewing CAD packages. For me, we got the HP 700 series workstation and the software on a Friday, and by Monday we had 27 parts in the system designed."
Time is the element that SheetAdvisor has affected most because it is time that affects everything else. SheetAdvisor decreases the development time so a part is created faster. SheetAdvisor's Design for Manufacturability (DFM) checking has intuitive warnings to let designers know if a punch, stamp, bend or other procedure will cause weaknesses or deformations, which can be corrected before the part is prototyped. DFM reviews the model using the engineer's selected tools to ensure a sound and manufacturable design. Some companies are using the solid model as their prototype. Because the software accurately represents a part, those companies combine the prototyping step as part of the first run of production. The toughest delays come from reaching the prototype stage only to find errors that need to be changed before production can begin. And sometimes those changes create other problems that were not predicted. Cline has seen many examples where SheetAdvisor would have detected all of those problems. "I know one company that did a 17 piece assembly prototype and they went through iteration after iteration -up to 18 revisions per piece," he recalls. "They weren't using SheetAdvisor and they couldn't tell where all the interferences were going to be. We took their parts, input them into the SheetAdvisor program, figured out where their mistakes were and corrected the problem. They lost nearly four months and wasted more than $100,000 getting to market, simply because they didn't apply SheetAdvisor to their engineering. The really sad part," he adds, "is they could have spent half what they lost and gotten the software and workstation. SheetAdvisor doesn't cost; it pays."
For customers not using SheetAdvisor, Tri-M-Co plugs in the numbers to create a solid model. About 80 percent of the time, errors are detected. Instead of discovering the mistakes while fabricating metal, the fabricator can make changes on the computer, avoiding delays and additional charges to its customers. It is a value-added service that virtually guarantees the customer will be back with future orders. "This is really a communications tool," Caldwell says. "It allows the designer to communicate to you in a quantifiable manner exactly what he wants. He doesn't leave the ambiguities that sometimes occurred in the past. He doesn't leave anything open to conjecture or interpretation because you have an actual computer simulated model of what he wants. Everybody wants it faster, cheaper, better. This is just the tool that helps us do those three things." Richard and Jackie Martin, owners of Tri-M-Co in San Marcos, Calif., remind their employees every day of who they all really work for, namely the customer. |