This is especially important with short lead times. While this data is very valuable, it can also be a challenge to navigate it while continuing production.

Included in the Overall Equipment Effectiveness paper

In this white paper, we guide you through how to make the most of OEE data with important checkpoints:

• Where to Start
• Roadmap to Increasing OEE Performance
• Lessons Learned from Improving OEE Performance

Once you finish reading this white paper, you will have a strong outline of the steps needed to implement OEE with confidence and how DELMIAWorks software can help you.

Fill out the form to download the white paper instantly! 

There are many discussions about how IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) can benefit your business and they cover all the main features, but how are you supposed to implement it? What technologies would work best with your production process? Often times, these discussions are so vague they leave you to do your own research and offer little when it comes to an actual plan of action. It is important to know what is available and how it will improve your efficiency with smart shop floor devices and generating high-level analytics.

Learn more about IIoT

This white paper will walk you through the steps that three manufactures used to determine what the needed to implement Industrial Internet of Things successfully with DELMIAWorks. Here are some of the steps they used:

• Determine a specific problem and a have fix in mind
• Look past the hype
• Pilot one process or cell at first
• Keep the initial scope simple
• Create an investment and roll-out plan

Once you finish reading this white paper, you will have a strong outline of the steps needed for implementation with confidence.

Fill out the form to download the whitepaper instantly! 

Alfred was born out of research into developing robots that can manipulate deformable materials, which change their shape when you interact with them (think guacamole or ice cream). Using a variety of utensils, such as scoops, ladles, and tongs, Alfred handily puts together meals based on the programmed instructions of the kitchen staff.

Why do we need a robot sous chef?

Dexai’s mission is to protect the food service industry from difficult labour shortages and help insulate it from economic ups and downs. At the same time, Alfred can reduce the risk of food-borne illnesses. Everything that Dexai designs meets the standards of the public health and safety organization NSF and each mechanical part in the complex design must be built with safe food handling and safe working conditions in mind.

Controlling Alfred the Robot Sous Chef

Supporting a startup

Dexai CEO David Johnson explained that when he and Anthony Tayoun started the company, they worked out of Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts. The incubator space has a great relationship with TriMech, which provides and supports software tools that are used across every stage of product development.

“TriMech answered all of our questions,” David said. “How do we get SOLIDWORKS licenses? How do we get a data management solution? TriMech has been with us from the very beginning.”

That beginning was four years ago; as Dexai took the challenging steps of turning an idea into a product, adding to its team, and scaling up production, Hardware Team Lead Justin Rooney said that TriMech became a trusted – and responsive – partner.

“There’s a big human component that I really appreciate about TriMech. It’s very easy to get on the phone with them or email them and get an answer. Even as we were researching 3DEXPERIENCE and comparing it with other products on the market, they seemed to have unlimited time to go through the decision-making process, which was amazing. And later, TriMech allowed me, as an individual with no IT experience, to roll out a PLM product to a big team.”

— Rana Odabas, Mechanical Engineer, Dexai Robotics

“When we were vetting a few different PLM options, TriMech stuck out to me as very available. They offered their services countless times to go through the functionality of 3DEXPERIENCE Works. Understanding that TriMech was always going to be there to answer questions veered us toward choosing 3DEXPERIENCE.”

One shared platform

3DEXPERIENCE Works PDM by Dassault Systèmes is a cloud-based platform that connects engineering and business activity in one real-time, collaborative environment.

Dexai design with 3DEXPERIENCE Works

Rana gave one example of how using the 3DX platform has improved productivity, when each designer is working on different parts, yet they all have access to the digital twin of the product.

“If we have multiple people working on the robot head, they can design their parts in parallel while tracking dependencies in the context of the same assembly. All team members have access to the full assembly and visibility into the latest stage of development. I think this has been the biggest benefit of having 3DEXPERIENCE. It really motivates collaboration across the team.”

In Dexai’s early years, the small team of 10 worked on their own local devices and passed zipped CAD files back and forth, a process not conducive to understanding how one subsystem fits with the rest of the system. Today, with a team of more than 25, they are all connected to the same cohesive platform.

Rana said the productivity of the team has increased “exponentially.”

“I don’t think we would have been able to do the development that we did over the course of the past year or so, and the scaling up that we’re gearing up to do, without 3DEXPERIENCE. It just wouldn’t be feasible. After a week of using the platform, I knew I would never go back.”

Alfred the Robot Sous Chef

Dexai is online at dexai.com.

Highlights of Dexai’s Robot Sous Chef success with 3DEXPERIENCE

• Designing in familiar SOLIDWORKS remains at the core of Dexai’s product development work.
• A digital twin of the entire product is easily accessible to everyone on the team.
• One person’s changes are immediately visible and understood by others.
• No more passing massive files back and forth between designers’ individual devices.
• Cloud-based – there’s no need for a traditional server-based approach.
• Scalable – allows for growth in the number of team members and increases in production.
• Modular – when ready, Dexai began to take advantage of product lifecycle management (PLM) components, such as identifying, assigning, and managing issues, and creating and maintaining an accurate and up-to-date manufacturing bill of materials.

Damon has patented a 360-degree AI-enhanced Advanced Warning System for Motorcycles called COPILOT™ and designed and built the world’s first shape-shifting electric motorcycle.

The safety system locks onto dozens of objects around the motorcycle and alerts the rider to oncoming threats using LEDs and vibration in the handlebars. The embedded crash detection sensors also collect rider, traffic, and vehicle data and send that information to the cloud. This means that Damon’s system learns from every rider and every situation.

The electronically adjustable ergonomics system unique to the Damon design is called SHIFT™ and is made up of four auto-adjustable points: seat, handlebars, foot pegs, and windscreen. Incredibly, the bike shifts from sport to touring to upright/city positions.

Damon Motorcycles – Halo Bike designed in SOLIDWORKS

Meeting design challenges using SOLIDWORKS

Damon’s strengths are rooted in technology but their mechanical engineering team gets the credit for building their proof-of-concept Halo bike.

They used a combination of 3D scanning, SOLIDWORKS desktop software, and 3D printing to create the unique and tricky components that would allow the bike to transform.

Product Design Manager Raymond Leung said a bike like the Halo had never been built before and it was challenging work.

“We had to build a safe, ridable prototype that would not only have a pleasing appearance but also features that transform. Parts need to morph safely and smoothly without interference.”

Raymond arranged for the basic features of a motorcycle to be laser scanned, then imported the scanned data into SOLIDWORKS. Reverse engineering gave him the base for creating the necessary appearance, as well as for designing mechanical parts.

Raymond said he trusts SOLIDWORKS to allow for multiple designers and engineers to work on a single file, and to handle large assemblies well. His team members often have to work in parallel and his models have more than 500 components. Those models come together to create the main assembly.

Advice on working with large assemblies is one of the ways Raymond has received help from TriMech. He has been using SOLIDWORKS for many years but occasionally relies on TriMech’s depth of expertise.

“TriMech gets back to me immediately with advice about how to solve any problem I run into. It’s convenient for me to visit them in person in downtown Vancouver to show them a problem and get timely help. They also have expertise in working with scanned data and in 3D printing so they bring a lot to our conversations.”

Next up, Raymond will be investigating SOLIDWORKS Simulation to enhance his ability to virtually test part performance, as well as solutions to improve data storage and supply chain management. Damon will also use SOLIDWORKS to design the next generation of the ergonomic system – one that conforms to the unique characteristics of an individual rider for maximum customization and comfort.

Changing the industry and rider experience

Head of Product Marketing Amber Spencer said the Damon team is proud of their progress to date.

“We’ve done so much in so little time, including taking the bike on tour. Our founder and CEO Jay Giraud presented a TechCrunch session and we’ve given media and motorcycle manufacturers a chance to try the bike. Everyone has been blown away. Seeing the reaction on people’s faces, when they ride the bike we created, has been very rewarding.”

Damon’s main purpose is to cause a shift in the industry. Motorcycles are often seen as unsafe, intimidating, and hard to ride.

“We want to see more people enjoying motorcycles,” Amber said. “With our background and tech expertise, we’re able to increase a rider’s safety and comfort exponentially. As we move forward into the future, we will continue to find ways to make the riding experience better.”

Damon’s future also includes securing further investment and business partners, and spreading the word about their innovations to individual riders. Amber said any motorcyclist who is interested can get on a list to test ride the bike and give essential feedback.

“We definitely want people to visit our website and learn more about us. And when you put your name on our beta list, you’ll have an opportunity to test ride and pre-order the Halo bike.”

For more information, please visit the Damon website.

Damon Motorcycles Team, Vancouver BC

With facilities in Nova Scotia, Canada and Maine, U.S.A., Nautel is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of AM and FM radio broadcast transmitters. Since 1969, they have deployed more than 15,000 transmitters in 177 countries. Nautel is best known as the first company to develop a commercially available, fully solid state broadcast transmitter. They also design and build navigational radio beacons, GPS transmitters, weather transmitters, and sonar systems.

As of December 2017, Nautel’s largest transmitter – a two-megawatt AM medium wave system – is on the air at Antenna Hungaria’s transmission facility near Solt, Hungary. It marked Nautel’s largest single installation to date.

Drafting manager Joey Panczyk has been with Nautel for 21 years. He jokes about seeing the drafting process go from sketches on paper napkins to complex designs in SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software. Since 2003, Nautel has been using SOLIDWORKS products provided and supported by TriMech.

“We needed software we could expand on and grow with, plus a solid provider and partner,” Joey says. “I knew SOLIDWORKS would represent our product in the best possible way and reduce our time to market.”

Joey’s department includes three mechanical designers and two circuit board designers. Over the last few years, Nautel has been ramping up their SOLIDWORKS use and adding features and functions offered by a variety of products in the SOLIDWORKS family. For about a year, Joey’s team has been using SOLIDWORKS for electronics design.

“One of the reasons we chose SOLIDWORKS is the easy interface between it and SOLIDWORKS,” Joey says. “There were hurdles to overcome but at the same time we successfully created the biggest circuit board in the history of our company.”

Nautel also chose SOLIDWORKS because they knew they could count on support from Javelin, support they didn’t have for their previous circuit board software.

“Even when PCB was challenging, TriMech was helpful, and reported any bugs to PCB. We took a chance on PCB because we have such trust in TriMech.”

Multi-product approach meets different needs

Nautel’s designers use SOLIDWORKS mainly for sheet metal design, since 95 percent of a transmitter is sheet metal-based material.

NVLT-GV FM Transmitters

As they have moved into working on sonar projects and complying with the requirements of shipboard mounted systems and military specs, they have been using SOLIDWORKS Simulation to test their designs at early stages, instead of having to use an external shock and vibration tester right away.

Joey also credits SOLIDWORKS Simulation for giving his team the ability to reliably test air flow, particularly important when working on small scale projects.

He recalls the old days of making models with cardboard and using “the brute force method” to see how a design would react in real life. Today, Simulation allows them to quickly test, catch bugs, and improve the design.

Another SOLIDWORKS product, Composer, has given Joey and his team the ability to present assembly drawings in three dimensions. Assembly drawings were always on paper – three dimensional drawings, but presented in two dimensions. Nautel now places a monitor at each work station along the assembly line for an FM power module. Employees interact with the screen, rotating or pulling apart a drawing, or accessing health and safety data. They can also view instructions for working with parts provided by third party suppliers.

“They have links to the information they need right at their fingertips,” Joey says. “We’re limiting our paper use, and no one has to flip through a book anymore. It has been well received.”

Composer also generates publications to outline how to operate and service Nautel transmitters, including images and 3D animations.

“This worked well for us in Hungary,” Joey notes. “We deliver all over the globe – the Middle East, Europe, India – we need documentation with fewer words and more images.”

Joey says presenting animations to potential customers allows them to understand the product better at an earlier stage in the sales process. For example, instead of seeing only a top-down view of the proposed floor plan, customers can see – in 3D – exactly how the equipment will fit in their space.

Nautel’s bid to win the business in Hungary was strengthened with images and 3D animation.

“For the first time in 40 years, they went shopping for one of the most powerful AM transmitters in the world and they take great pride in their equipment. We won them over and they took a chance on us with a $4-million project. 3D technology helped make that happen.”

To control data and improve collaboration, Nautel also uses SOLIDWORKS Product Data Management (PDM). PDM helps the team manage files and workflow. It offers a secure vault with controlled access – everyone involved can access the information they need, while files are protected by automated version and revision control systems.

“Sign-offs are easily recorded, and everyone knows what stage a project is at, reducing the risk of building the wrong part,” Joey says. “And not everyone has a super computer to manage full design files, so being able to generate a PDF for our manufacturing department is important.”

Joey has been a champion for SOLIDWORKS for years. He says Nautel is packed with people interested in the latest and greatest, and in finding the right tools to help employees be faster and better.

“We’ve invested a lot in SOLIDWORKS to get the benefits of building stronger and better products. We can make design changes in seconds, generate images documentation, easily explain designs to others, and just get to market quicker.”

Results for Nautel

• Using a variety of products in the SOLIDWORKS family is meeting Nautel’s unique needs in equipment design, testing, production, deployment, servicing, marketing, and sales.
• Using SOLIDWORKS Simulation software, Nautel’s designers can test air flow and shock and vibration in-house, and earlier in the design process.
• SOLIDWORKS offers easy integration between electrical and mechanical design and is well supported by TriMech
• Visuals and technical documentation created in SOLIDWORKS Composer, using existing CAD data, help Nautel stand out from the competition and allow them to communicate better across cultures.
• Data management tools provided in SOLIDWORKS PDM help everyone at Nautel maintain up-to-date files, manage workflow and sign offs, and avoid costly errors.

As a leading manufacturer of Canadian aquatic sensors and instrumentation, Satlantic Inc. works closely with the ocean sciences community and many of the top research institutions around the world. The need to collaborate and communicate with partners and customers on the design of its products led the company to move to a 3D CAD system, replacing its AutoCAD® 2D design tools, first with Mechanical Desktop® software and then with the Autodesk Inventor® 3D CAD package. After using Inventor software for four years, Satlantic personnel began to notice that many of their collaborating research institutions, partners, and suppliers were using SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD software, according to Donald MacPherson, mechanical engineering technologist.

“Everyone we work with was using SOLIDWORKS software, including research centers like the Monterey Bay Research Institute, which meant we had to spend a lot of time converting and translating files to exchange design data back and forth,” MacPherson recalls. “Whenever we tried to download component models, we rarely could obtain them in Inventor format. Not only were we out of step with the partners we worked with, but we also became increasingly dissatisfied with Inventor’s performance and stability. As a result, we continually struggled to find workaround solutions, and lost days’ worth of work due to system crashes on at least two occasions.”

HyperProII Photollum Aquatic Sensor

In 2005, Satlantic management asked MacPherson to evaluate SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software as a potential replacement for Inventor. MacPherson taught himself how to use an evaluation version of SolidWorks software and then redid a project he had already completed. “It was clear that I could be more productive using SOLIDWORKS software,” MacPherson notes. “Creating design features is more straightforward, and working in assemblies is a lot faster.”

Satlantic decided in 2006 to switch to SOLIDWORKS Professional because of its ease of use, broad data compatibility, ability to utilize legacy data, and large assembly capabilities. The company also valued the SOLIDWORKS SimulationXpress integrated analysis application and design configuration functionality.

Working faster and better within an assembly

Since implementing SOLIDWORKS software, Satlantic has realized a significant boost in productivity, especially in the development of assemblies. By using SOLIDWORKS software, MacPherson estimates he has eliminated the time spent converting and translating files and has reduced modelling time by 25 to 30 percent.

“It’s a lot easier and faster to design parts within an assembly with SOLIDWORKS software,” MacPherson stresses. “Working within the context of an assembly, creating new parts is quick and easy. I no longer have to struggle to come up with a workaround to get the software to do what I want.”

“In my opinion, 99 percent of the functions in SOLIDWORKS software are easier to use, and they provide more options and versatility than in Autodesk Inventor. Since we now use the same platform as our various partners and suppliers, we achieve substantial gains in productivity.”

Boosting Aquatic sensor productivity via design configurations

In addition to improving its handling of assemblies, Satlantic employs SolidWorks design configuration capabilities to save even more time and broaden its design spectrum. “Although we never fully implemented configurations with Inventor, we have used configurations in SOLIDWORKS software from the very beginning,” MacPherson explains. “The versatility of configurations is a big plus that we use in a variety of ways.

PAR Aquatic Sensor designed with SOLIDWORKS

“For example, we have an instrument that can utilize six different configurations of printed circuit boards (PCBs) with six different bills of materials (BOMs),” he adds. “With SOLIDWORKS software, I have included all six configurations, as well as the accompanying BOMs, in a single model. I can then provide appropriate assembly drawings to our assembly technicians and technologists. Before implementing SOLIDWORKS software, we simply could not have done this.”

Integrating PCB layouts with mechanical assemblies

Moving to SOLIDWORKS Professional also enabled Satlantic to integrate its mechanical and electrical CAD system data, thereby improving design visualization and eliminating potential design errors. Before installing SOLIDWORKS software, the company’s mechanical and electrical designers and engineers could not effectively share MCAD and ECAD data. With SOLIDWORKS software, MacPherson can import IDF-format PCB layout files into SOLIDWORKS Professional, which allows engineers to see all the components within the context of the assembly. “Before we installed SOLIDWORKS Professional, our electrical designers could not visualize PCB components in 3D,” MacPherson points out. “They could see height values and drill-hole dimensions in their layout, but with SOLIDWORKS software they can now visualize the entire envelope in 3D.”