Digital Manufacturing

Digital Manufacturing solutions have been available for some time, but most implementations have been comprised of point solutions that provide only a portion of the capabilities of a complete Digital Manufacturing solution. John MacKrell, CIMdata Senior Consultant and co-author of the report explained that while point solutions provide benefits, these are not as extensive as the benefits of an integrated solution.

By involving the extended enterprise including product design, process design, quality, suppliers, and management, companies have been able to achieve substantial benefits throughout the enterprise. To achieve the largest benefits and create an innovation environment, companies have to cross over the traditional boundaries in their organizations.

CIMdata defines Digital Manufacturing as solutions that support manufacturing process planning collaboration among engineering disciplines, from product design to manufacturing. The solutions use best practice processes and allow access to the full digital product definition, including tooling and manufacturing process designs.

Digital Manufacturing is, in practice, an integrated suite of tools that work with product definition data to support tool design, manufacturing process design, visualization, simulation, and other analyses necessary to optimize the manufacturing process.