Traditional methods of designing production machinery are coming under pressure as manufacturers seek to accelerate the design-and-launch cycle for new products. John Gooday explains how a new object-orientated design environment can dramatically cut design time and cost qqqfor OEMs.

Manufacturers everywhere are striving to shorten the development cycle of new products, reduce their time to market and so maximise sales opportunities. This in turn puts enormous pressure on OEMs to speed up development of the production machinery required.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the automotive industry, where car manufacturers are in a constant race to bring out new or improved models to help capture a bigger share of a largely static market.
Most manufacturers have already realised the efficiency gains from increased levels of automation on the factory floor and are now focusing their investment in software to more closely integrate their operations.
As a leading provider of manufacturing automation and control solutions, Rockwell Automation works closely with many leading OEMs supplying the automotive and other industries.
To support its customers in the drive to quicken the implementation of production systems, Rockwell Automation has developed Enterprise Controls, a web-based, object-orientated environment for the design, programming, simulation and deployment of manufacturing systems (Fig. 1).
Traditionally, the designs for a new product, the production process and the manufacturing facility have been isolated 'islands' of development. With each taking place in sequence, there are limited opportunities to reduce the development cycle. The OEM's electrical engineer, for example, was not able to design the machinery control and automation system until the mechanical engineer had almost completed the design of the machine.
Attempts to compress the cycle by designing controls before the mechanical design was complete could lead to frequent, costly changes to other elements such as controls and logic control. There was also an increased danger that changes could get out of sequence and that the control system would not work with the machinery.
One solution might be to implementing a product data management (PDM) system, but this still does not tell the electrical engineer when the mechanical engineer has made changes. Also, changes made to the electrical design might impact on the mechanical aspects of the machine, but the mechanical designer has no way of knowing what changes are being made downstream of his own development 'island'.

Now, with Enterprise Controls, OEMs can break down the barriers between design functions, allowing different elements to be designed in parallel and reducing overall development time by more than 50 per cent. This 'digital manufacturing' approach allows the electrical and mechanical designers to share information, enabling the simultaneous design of the machinery and its control system.
Collapsing the design cycle in this way is possible because of the object-orientated structure of the Enterprise Controls environment. While each stage of the design process may involve different software, objects embedded into the machine design provide all the information that the electrical engineer needs to design the PLC (programmable logic controller), HMI (human-machine interface), wiring and other elements of the control system.

Automatic updates

This information is constantly and automatically updated as the mechanical engineer makes changes, so the development of the control system is able to keep pace with the machine design process. Similarly, changes made by the controls engineer are immediately available to the mechanical engineer.
Furthermore, because Enterprise Controls is web-based, all information - including electrical schematics, logic, HMI and network configuration - is held in a single location, easily accessible by everyone with clearance to work on the project and always up-to-date with the latest changes.
As changes to the detailed design of the product and the production facility can take place right up until the plant is being commissioned, this approach also minimises the amount of re-engineering required when the machinery and its controls are brought together for the first time on site.
Achieving the benefits offered by Enterprise Controls requires no extra effort on the part of the mechanical engineer; once the objects have been defined, the information required for the design of the controls is automatically made available to the electrical engineer, without the need to manually extract data from the mechanical CAD package. Engineers can continue using their existing, familiar design tools, so there is no retraining on new software required. Another benefit of this object-orientated environment is that OEMs no longer need to have engineers specialising in design work for particular customers. At present, an OEM building machinery for the automotive industry, for example, may have to cope with several different design specifications laid down by each car manufacturer.
An 'object' might represent a clamp intended to hold a body panel on a production line. The object would include all the information needed for the mechanical and electrical design of that component, including its dimensions, power requirements, control and diagnostic features. Because car manufacturers require suppliers to conform to their individual design standards in terms of the CAD tool, logic control and equipment descriptions, it is almost impossible for all of an OEM's engineers to be fully conversant with the standards used by all its customers. Enterprise Controls, however, enables each customer's specifications to be embedded in the objects so that a similar machinery design can easily be made to conform to different car manufacturers' specifications.
Rockwell Automation's extensive engineering support capability is able to assist in the creation of object libraries for customers and the integration of Enterprise Controls into the user's design environment.
By compressing the typical design cycle by more than 50 per cent, Rockwell Automation's Enterprise Controls enables OEMs to do just that, enabling them to provide a better service to the customer at lower cost.

John Gooday is European Engagement Manager - Design Automation, at Rockwell Automation.