Manufacturing platforms — from instant quoting engines to on-demand assembly production planners
Manufacturing is more complex and distributed than ever. Companies now face unprecedented levels of competition due to globalization, diversity in customer requirements, demand for innovation, development speed, and cost pressures. To cope with all these pressures, manufacturing should and must think differently.
The most interesting trend in manufacturing these days is the rise of manufacturing platforms. Think about manufacturing companies rewriting rules of production and product development. It is a mix of globalization, local manufacturing and coordination by using tech platforms.
Manufacturing platform can unlock the opportunity behind distributed manufacturing.
Distributed manufacturing also known as distributed production, cloud producing and local manufacturing is a form of decentralized manufacturing practiced by enterprises using a network of geographically dispersed manufacturing facilities that are coordinated using information technology. It can also refer to local manufacture via the historic cottage industry model, or manufacturing that takes place in the homes of consumers.
The important element of distributed manufacturing is the ability to create value at different locations via the manufacturing process. Shipment cost can be minimized when you manufacturing near the consumer location. Manufacturing components in different locations, then bringing them for assembly can lower production cost. To make it happen you need to create digital networks capable to make an analysis of part production, assembly, shipment, delivery and run product cost models to optimize the process.
Forbes article — Why 2019 Will Be The Year Of The Manufacturing Platform written by Michael Mandel gives you a great perspective on the opportunity behind manufacturing platforms.
Manufacturing platforms is a logical continuation of distributed manufacturing and production combined with cloud tools and tech platforms. Manufacturing separated product design and marketing from production for many years, but modern technological platforms can actually connect these processes together.
Forbes article brings an example of an instant quotation process for part manufacturing as a first element to build a distributed manufacturing network.
…core technology of the Internet of Goods, manufacturing platforms carry that process to the next level. For example, Amsterdam-based 3D Hubs and Maryland-based Xometry offer distributed manufacturing of parts. 3D Hubs calls itself “the world’s largest network of manufacturing Hubs,” and promises to “[u]pload your files, get an instant quote and go into production in less than 5 minutes.” Xometry offers to “[i]nstantly access the production capacity of over 2,500 manufacturers with wide-ranging capabilities across 50 states,” and calls itself “the largest network of its kind.”
Instant quotation combined with digital design systems created platforms like 3D Hubs and Xometry enabling design and one-click-manufacturing process. Sending design file to 3D printing or machining shop makes it a very promising opportunity.
The next step in the development of a manufacturing platform is to go from manufacturing parts to assembly and production process optimization. To make it happen manufacturing platforms should go the next level of complexity beyond part design understanding. It is about capturing and understanding an entire product, its bill of materials including contractors and suppliers relationships, cost factors and dependencies.
Applications of such manufacturing platforms can support highly demanded mass customization processes as well as complex engineering to order projects with complex logistics and mix of production and purchasing decisions.
Here are few examples of such opportunities from Forbes article:
Some manufacturing platforms make it easier for consumers to customize their purchases of clothing or jewelry, say, before they are even made. For example, London-based Unmade “gives brands the ability to offer customisable products and manufacture the results.” Unmade notes that: “E-commerce orders are sent direct to your factory, made and delivered straight to the consumer.” In effect, Unmade’s business model creates more variety for consumers without creating more waste.
Huge manufacturing companies like Seimens and GE have gotten into the manufacturing platform game as well, with varying degrees. For example, Siemens offers Mindsphere, “a cloud-based, open IoT operating system” that “connects your products, plants, systems, and machines, enabling you to harness the wealth of data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT) with advanced analytics. “ And while GE’s digital unit has struggled, the company’s Predix Platform still has strong potential as “a comprehensive and secure application platform that can run, scale, and extend digital industrial solutions.”
From the early beginning, OpenBOM was a technology to manage Bill of Materials in distributed environment. Here is a passage from CIOReview:
OpenBOM, is removing the pain of tracking BOM data spreadsheets across networks of engineers, supply chain managers, and contract manufacturers. openBoM takes advantage of the latest cloud technologies to provide a BOM and supply chain solution capable of operating in scenarios different from the typical company focused approach. As a cloud based solution, it offers the quickest ROI for solving manufacturing problems in distributed environments. openBoM provides a very attractive alternative to CIOs looking for an affordable solution to their BOM and supply chain challenges. “We differentiate between existing solutions adapted to new cloud realities and native cloud multi — tenant solutions leveraging modern data management trends,” explains Shilovitsky.
At OpenBOM, we build a cloud platform capable to manage a core element of every manufacturing process — Bill of Materials and Catalogs of assemblies and components. You can think about this information as lifeblood of every production process. In a nutshell, OpenBOM allows us to combine information about complex product structure and predict how many components are needed to build a specific order or configuration. This information doesn’t exist in a single place. The nature of this information is to be multi-disciplinary (think mechanical, electronics) and distributed (think contractors and suppliers). The distributed nature of OpenBOM provides a technology to connect data and people located in different places into one single logical structure.
Our latest development is to organize digitally-enabled end to end process from design to purchasing using Bill of Materials data collected from distributed engineering and manufacturing teams.
Such a process is becoming a foundation of distributed production activity combining design, engineering, purchasing, and manufacturing. By targeting small and medium-size manufacturing, OpenBOM is using modern technology platforms to provide tools and decision processes by connecting and analyzing data about products, design, contractors, and suppliers.
Conclusion.
We can see a growing opportunity behind the development of manufacturing platforms in the next few years. Instant quotation engines and digital part manufacturing were a great foundation to bring engineers and manufacturing companies online to share resources, optimize design, assess manufacturability and enable global manufacturing. The next step in collect information about the entire product to take optimization to the next level. OpenBOM gives you a way to plan assembly production, optimize purchasing decisions and connect engineers, contractors and manufacturing shops in distributed networks.
Are you interested to learn more about what OpenBOM does? Please reach me out via oleg @ openbom dot com.
Best, Oleg
PS. Let’s get to know each other better. If you live in the Greater Boston area, I invite you for a coffee together (coffee is on me). If not nearby, let’s have a virtual coffee session — I will figure out how to send you a real coffee.
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