Faster also means better

Many first time users cite the acceleration of projects as the most outstanding benefit of switching to an advanced design automation software package. For China Chemical Guilin Engineering Corp (CGEC), a manufacturer of tire-making machinery and production lines, the average 60% reduction in project turnaround times realized by switching from a legacy CAD to EPLAN Electric P8 in 2010 has spun off several additional benefits the company values highly. EPLAN automating many marginal, labor-intensive project tasks has freed electrical engineers to concentrate on optimizing product quality. Better design integrity and clarity – the latter a function of using the software’s standardized reports – has reduced the incidence of errors in manufacturing. From a strategic standpoint, the archiving of a great deal of recurrent content which became possible with the adoption of a database-centered CAE means the expertise of engineers leaving CGEC is retained for use by their replacements, a form of generational knowledge transfer. “Now the engineers are liberated from the previously large amounts of repetitive, low-level work and are able to devote themselves to product planning, performance optimization, functional perfection and other core design work so as to guarantee product quality, improve product service life, and reduce equipment costs.” Time, expertise was being wasted
CGEC builds production lines for vehicle tires of different sizes including giant all-steel heavy industrial tires. The company enjoys a 40% domestic market share in mechanical curing presses and an almost 70% share for mechanical vulcanizers. Its equipment also is exported to major tire-makers like Michelin and Bridgestone. Errors spilled over to manufacturing
Prior to switching to EPLAN, the 20 electrical engineers using CAD programs to complete an assignment like a mat glue line were spending about 60% of their time doing wire-numbering, crossreferencing, list-building, error-checking and other such tasks manually. Often, that involved numbering or tagging literally thousands of wires, components and devices and led to numerous errors. Power supplies and associated references between auxiliary coil contacts had to be marked and confirmed on different pages, another source of errors. When installing a turnkey production line at the customer’s location, says Huang Ren, CGEC’s technical department director, staff were having to do a great deal of re-wiring because of errors in the design documentation. Not only was this a waste of time, it altered the layout for electronic control cabinets. “Only a small percentage of the engineers’ time was used to do a good job on project planning and development, performance optimization, functional perfection and other core design work that makes use of their professional knowledge and expertise,” says Mr. Huang. “It failed to give good play to the engineers’ value and creativity, which went against our objective of producing sustainable research, development and innovation.” Developed resource bank in EPLAN
Almost as soon the company adopted EPLAN, the software automated most of those manual tasks, and the number of errors fell sharply. CGEG also began to take advantage of the program’s database capabilities by making and archiving recurrent content as error-free macros and templates. Rather than engineers having to recreate common component or function data sets like modular function circuits for each assignment, they could import their macros into projects in seconds. Misunderstandings now avoided
Prior to the introduction of EPLAN, says Mr. Huang, the electrical engineering department had a hard time converting project documentation created in a CAD environment into formats that were easily understood by the accounting, purchasing and production departments. “Many problems would happen in the manufacturing phase because of this poor communication even if the design was precise and without errors,” says Mr. Huang. That in turn would lead to delays and even problems with product quality. Now, each project prepared in EPLAN generates up to 30 types of standardized schematics, forms and reports that are readily understood by every department. This has led to better production scheduling and more efficient and timely ordering of components. The elimination of misunderstandings also reduces do-overs in manufacturing. Experience passed on to new employees
For Mr. Huang, standardizing and storing content helps insulate the company against the loss of expertise from staff turnover. “If the engineering knowledge and experience of departing employees is effectively retained and then inherited by the new staff, the damage caused by this brain drain is greatly reduced,” he said. “Now this knowledge and experience is effectively classified and retained through EPLAN’s strong macro-variable modular design function and by means of its database.” New staff benefit from that experience whenever they apply that standardized content, which allows the company to respond quickly and effectively to customer demands for new products or variants. “All of these problems were well-solved after the introduction of EPLAN project design. EPLAN saves wasted time and energy, for example in component and line numbering and associated references, letting the computer do these tasks and checking for electrical errors throughout the entire project, guaranteeing product design quality and reliability.” Knowledge accumulated and retained
CGEC – China Chemical Guilin Engineering Corp – is one of that country’s leading OEMs for tire-making machines and production lines. Using a legacy CAD system, the 20 electrical engineers were spending up to 60% of their work time doing low-value tasks, like device tagging, wire numbering, cross-referencing and error-checking. After CGEC switched to EPLAN Electric P8, those and other time-consuming chores were performed by the software automatically, freeing up the engineers to focus on assuring product quality and reliability. That, in turn, greatly reduced the incidence of manufacturing do-overs attributed to design errors that used to occur in a CAD environment. Today, a great deal of design content is being standardized and retained in the EPLAN database, further accelerating assignments while helping assure very high product quality on an on-going basis in spite of the inevitable staff turnover. Find out more about CGEC at <link http: www.cgec.com.cn>www.cgec.com.cn.