Product Lifecycle Management » Hiller Associates Product Cost Management

SEER Composites Brings Cost Estimating to CATIA

Mar 202014

Hiller Associates posted the following article at ENGINEERING.COM yesterday. You can read it there at this link, or just keep reading below!

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Another solid piton in the cliff of making product cost mainstream in CAD / PLM Products?

CATIA users can now get a faster and more effective way to design and source composites products with the highest profit by bringing the estimation ability closer to the designer’s native environment. Galorath Incorporated debuted its newest integration of SEER® for Manufacturing with the Dassault Systems 3DEXPERIENCE® Platform in CATIA at the JEC Composites conference in Paris. The new product is called the SEER Ply Cost Estimator.

Who is involved?

Galorath Incorporated grew out of a consulting practice focused on product cost estimation, control, and reduction that began in the late 1970

s. Over the last 30 years, Galorath built their costing knowledge into the SEER suite of software products. SEER is one of the independent product cost estimating software companies.

Dassualt Systems is one of the “big 3” Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) companies in the world.

Hiller Associates spoke with Galorath CEO Dan Galorath, Vice President of Sales & Marketing Brian Glauser, and SEER for Manufacturing product lead Dr. Chris Rush and got a full product demo.

What does this integration do?

The integration allows users of CATIA to use SEER’s costing software for composite materials within the CATIA environment. In CATIA, the engineer designs a lay-up for a composite part, generating a Ply Table (a critical design artifact for composite parts that specifies material, geometry, and some manufacturing info). That activates the integrated SEER Ply Cost Estimator so that the designer (or the cost engineer or purchasing person aiding him) can set up more part-specific costing choices and preferences within the CATIA environment.

When ready, the user pushes the cost analysis button. The information is processed by SEER Ply Cost Estimator which sends the ply table data and other information to the interfacing SEER-MFG software to compute cost. The cost data is returned and presented to the user, once again within a native CATIA screen.

How broad is the capability?

Click to ENLARGE!

Currently, the integration of SEER is applicable for parts made of composite materials. It’s a strong starting point for the integration partnership because SEER has a long experience in the field of costing composites, working with companies in the defense and aerospace verticals. Composites are also becoming more mainstream in other industries, such as automotive and consumer products. Galorath has been a major player in the US Government’s Composites Affordability Initiative (CAI), a 50/50 government/industry funded consortium including Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop Grumman that was formed to drive down the costs of composites. Galorath has also worked with Airbus in the area of composites parts costing.

Galorath’s Brian Glauser says that the SEER Ply Cost Estimator has hundreds of man-years invested, much from previous work with CAI and with aerospace companies that resulted in several of the modules already in the SEER-MFG standalone product.

The first version of the SEER Ply Cost Estimator handles many composites manufacturing processes, materials, concepts of complexity, and both variable and tooling costs. However, it does not yet directly cost the assembly of one part to another.

The initial integration will be to CATIA v5, but SEER and CATIA have signed a v6 agreement as well. That integration will follow later.

Galorath (and likely Dassault) are hoping that the SEER Ply Cost Estimator will be well received by customers and help drive many product cost benefits. If this happens, there may be demand from Dassualt’s end customers not only to improve the SEER Ply Cost Estimator, but to expand the SEER/CATIA integration to other manufacturing processes covered in SEER’s stand-alone software products such as machining, plastics, sheet metal and assembly processes.

What does it mean for Functional Level Groups?

Philippe Laufer, the CEO of CATIA was quoted saying :

“Using Galorath’s SEER for Manufacturing in CATIA…will help companies perform early trade-off analysis on the use of various materials and composites processes before manufacturing even takes place.”

Well, that has been one of the goals in Product Cost Management for a long time. If your company uses composites, the tool has the following possibilities:

Engineering – identify which design choices are driving cost and by how much
Purchasing/Manufacturing – get an early warning of what to expect from suppliers before asking for quotes or estimates (should-cost)
Cost Engineering –focal point for the cross-functional discussion about cost to drive participation, especially from engineering

It’s important to realize that this integration will have its limitations, as with any costing product. First, the current integration applies only to composites. While expensive, composites are only one type of part on the Bill of Material (BOM). You will have to go beyond the current integration of SEER/CATIA to cost the full BOM, perhaps to SEER’s standalone costing product or to those of its competitors.

Second, remember that cost is far harder to “accurately” estimate than many physical performance characteristics. While meeting an absolute cost target is important, even more important are the following:

Continuous Design Cost Improvement – If your company consistently designs lower cost products because you have superior cost estimation information, you WILL beat your competitors.
Correct Cost and Margin Negotiation – If your company is better at negotiating quotes because it can give suppliers a better understanding of what it will cost them to make your part and you can negotiate a margin that is not too high, but adequate to keep your suppliers healthy, you WILL beat your competitors¹.

What does it mean for the C-Level?

Philippe Laufer of CATIA also says:

“This [the SEER Composites integration] leads to finding out the most efficient way of manufacturing a product while meeting cost, performance, functionality, and appearance requirements.”

The C-suite doesn’t really care about composites or ply tables in and of themselves, but it does care about revenue and profit. Of course every well-marketed product will claim to improve these metrics. Regarding product cost, the good news is that Galorath and Dassault are aiming at a big target. Companies that use a lot of composites can have very high costs. For example, Boeing and Airbus have Cost of Goods Sold of 84.6% and 85.5% and Earnings before Tax of 7.2 and 3.6%, respectively². Those COGS figures are big targets on top of a highly leveraged COGS/Profit ratio.

What does it mean for Product Cost Management becoming mainstream in the enterprise software stack?

We asked Dan Galorath how long it would be before Product Cost Management was as much of the PLM ecosystem as finite element, manufacturing simulation, or environmental compliance. He replied:

“Cost estimation software will never be on every designer’s workstation, but I don’t believe that is what it means for Product Cost Management to be considered ‘mainstream.’ It’s not fully mainstream yet, but a greater need is being driven by outsourcing and the tight business environment. The procurement folks can’t only rely on internal manufacturing knowledge like they used to. They need tools like SEER to fill the gap and move the cost knowledge base forward.”

We agree with Mr. Galorath. This is another step, another piton to secure Product Cost Management onto the PLM cliff, as PCM continues to climb this steep hill.

This is the first integration point between independent Product Cost Management software companies and the PLM/ERP world since September 2012, when Siemens PLM purchased Tsetinis Perfect Costing³. PTC has built some level of cost tracking ability into Windchill, and Solidworks (owned by Dassault) has developed the first couple versions of a costing calculation module for their product.

There is still a lot of ground to cover. There are quite a few independent product cost management software tools that have costing intellectual property that can accelerate the process, especially if the big PLM companies acquire them or partner with them. When that will happen is anybody’s guess, but for now it looks like CATIA users, at least, have a viable solution for composites costing… and maybe more in the future.

1 For more information, see the Hiller Associates Industry Week Article: Your Should-cost Number is Wrong, But It Doesn’t Matter

2 Per www.morningstar.com, trailing 12 months COGS, 3/13/2014

3 Siemens buys Perfect Costing Solutions (Tsetinis), Hiller Associates, September 2012

Opposing Forces in your Bill of Materials

Product Lifecycle Management, Uncategorized 11 Responses »

Jan 292014

We received the following question about Bills of Material (BOMs) from a product development manager:

QUESTION: “How does one balance the need of a BOM to be expedient and fast for real world use, while still trying to make an investment in a universal and reusable bomb?”

That’s a great question for product development teams. Our answer is a series of steps:

STEP 1 – Admit it’s a problem

It may sound like the trite stuff of a 12-step program, but the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem! There’s nothing wrong with having a problem, and in fact, solving problems is what we went to engineering school to do, didn’t we? Some people will tell you that you can have it all (usability and re-usability) in your BOM structure instantly and without conflict. That’s delusional, but we can make incremental progress over time.

STEP 2 – Define the problem

Going back to our school days, the first thing we would do in our statics or dynamics homework would be to list the forces that are active. There are at least two forces in play, and for the most part they are directly opposed to one another:

Functional Universality / Re-usability – we would like to have a universal BOM that can be re-used and easily modified to work for each product.
Expediency / Practicality – We have to ship the product out the door on a certain timeline. The BOM has to be easy enough to use that we can modify it quickly so that we can get our “day-job” done.

STEP 3 – Recognize that the equilibrium point is dynamic over time

Where we start out on our journey of practicality vs. universality in the BOM is not where those forces may end up in the future. The equilibrium point between those forces will change over time.

In Figure 1, we see that initially the force of expediency/practicality is stronger. Therefore, at first our BOM will mostly focus on the needs of today, rather than the needs of tomorrow. However, over time we can reduce some of the immediate pressure to ship product, because we have invested in the bill of material. The equilibrium point is driven to the right on Figure 1 toward a more universal BOM, which is still practical and expedient for our daily use.

Figure 1 Balancing BOM Usability vs. RE-usability
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STEP 4 – Knowing the equilibrium point at any point in time

How do we know how to balance the two forces at any given point in time? The recognition of a third force may actually help us simplify the problem. That force is the needs and goals of our management team in the company.

The management team is certainly interested in shipping the product for immediate revenue and profit. However, they are also responsible for stable growth of the company over time. Management needs are a downward pressure that we can use to our advantage, just like the Romans did with their brilliant discovery of the arch.

Figure 2 represents such an idealized arch. The forces of the needs for universality vs. practicality are pushing against one another. Without a third force, certainly the structure would tumble. However, with the third force of management needs, it’s much easier to balance the two forces and know where that equilibrium point is at a given point in time.

Figure 2 Balancing BOM Usability vs. RE-usability with Management Pressure
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Figure 2 – The down force of management decision making

STEP 5 – Make sure you have a solid keystone

What is the keystone in the arch? The keystone bears the pressure of all three forces and balances them. The keystone in our process is a thoughtful and dynamic owner of the bill of material structure. This might be a consultant, a specific person who specializes in product lifecycle management, or the product development manager. Whoever it is, this person or team should be able to view the opposing forces not as forces that will crush them, but as forces that will help them balance each other.

As with any problem in the real world, unfortunately we’re not dealing with a precise science here. However, hopefully this expansion of our framework will be a way to think about making progress, as you balance usability vs. re-usability in your bill of material structure.

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This post is 3rd in a series of posts on ENGINEERING.com about Bills of Materials (BOMs). The first outlines the importance of managing the BOM: Dr. Strangepart: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the BOM. Next is a framework of how to build re-usability into the BOM: Form, Fit, and Function – A Framework for your Bill of Material.

Form, Fit, and Function – A Framework for your Bill of Material

Product Lifecycle Management, Uncategorized 12 Responses »

Jan 272014

Continuing , the series on the Bill of Material we began with the article Dr. Strangepart: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the BOM, here is a full re-print of the next in the series. You can find the original at ENGINEERING.com here:

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In my post Dr. Strangepart: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the BOM, we began talking about the extremely complex process of managing the bill of material (BOM). That discussion focused on intelligent part numbers, but today I want to move to the question of whether the BOM is primarily keyed off of the functional use of a part or the specific part number itself. This is a tension that has existed since bills of material were created, when man married an axle to a wheel.

Why do people care whether the BOM is driven by part numbers or the part’s function? The answer is that each has certain advantages. Driving the BOM by actual part numbers is very useful for purchasing and manufacturing, and when an engineer is focusing on an individual piece of hardware. However, when the engineer or a product manager moves from one product to another, a function driven BOM allows him to compare components more easily.

The ability to compare BOMs has huge implications for the ability of engineering to successfully re-use parts. Re-use lowers both the cost of the hardware itself (by re-using tooling and increasing production volumes) while also reducing the engineering time needed to design a new part. Re-use has been the great white hope of the engineering community from time immemorial, but it is very challenging.

Although Product Lifecycle Management software vendors talk about re-use, most companies do a very poor job. Trying to manage re-use without intelligent part numbers and a functional way to look at the BOM is like searching for a single item in a hoarder’s basement that’s jammed full of boxes with no labels. Eventually you give up, go to the store, and buy a new one! That’s one of the big reasons why re-use has struggled in the engineering community.

So, how do we balance the tension between these two things? Here is a simple framework for thinking about the BOM that I call Form, Fit, and Function.

Figure 1 CLICK to ENLARGE

By function, I mean what the part is actually doing, what its purpose in life is. By form I mean the specific piece of hardware or part that we’re dealing with. In Figure 1 there is a simple example of how function and form relate to each other. Typically, the superset will be function. The function in this case is to provide rear vision to a driver of a vehicle. The function is the result of the part operating correctly. The part itself is the form that “delivers” that function. In this case, we might provide rear vision by designing a mirror, a camera, or some sort of sensor.

The third part of the framework is the fit of the part. However, by fit I don’t mean the actual geometric tolerances or real estate that the part occupies. What I mean is, “What are the unique attributes of the part that make it “fit” the function, i.e. accomplish the function?”

Figure 2 shows another example of a functionally controlled BOM. In this case, we’re using an example of the propulsion of a vehicle, perhaps a jet aircraft. In this case we show propulsion as a top level Function, along with sub-levels of the powerplant, how the power is transferred, and the cooling system.

Figure 2 Hiller Associates Form & Fit Functional BOM Example
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The coolant is the Form that satisfies the Function of the cooling system. We assign an intelligent part number for the specific coolant. One might ask, when do I move from a Function to a part number (Form)? The answer to that is, whenever it is convenient. It will take a little bit of time for your team to develop a functional BOM that has a manageable level of hierarchy in it.

TIP: Any more than three or four levels of hierarchy can be very difficult to manage.

There is a many-to-many relationship between the Function and the Form (part). Depending on how far down the Function tree we go, we may need to attach more than one Form (part) to satisfy a function. On the other hand, if our functional tree is deeper, on certain products there may be one assembly (Form) that satisfies more than one Function on the functional tree.

Moving to Fit, we see that each Form may have multiple attributes (ways of fitting the function). The coolant “fits” our functional need by the attributes that it has. In general there will be a one-to-many relationship between Form (part) and Fit (attributes) respectively.

Form, Fit, and Function is a simple way to look at how we structure our products. It lends itself well to re-use of parts, but also for the re-use of work break down structures that are used in aerospace and defense.

Some companies are now working on constructing skeleton “Starter” or “Universal” BOMs that they re-use for each new product. The idea is to start with a generic BOM, and then add and delete to match the needs of a new product. The goal is for the company to have one universal BOM, or one for each unique product group.

This is a great idea in theory, but it’s not trivial to execute. To do this in your own company will likely take your engineering team, product management, and a consultant a year or more to find a structure that suits your needs. However, once this is done, the speed and re-use advantages should be significant. Hopefully, the Form, Fit, and Function BOM Framework will give you a simple way to think about it!

Dr. Strangepart: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the BOM

Product Lifecycle Management, Uncategorized 37 Responses »

Jan 232014

Yesterday, we began a series of articles at one of our media partners, www.ENGINEERING.com. Instead, of focusing on Product Cost Management, we are focusing on another maddeningly difficult problem with critical implications to the Firm: structuring the Bill of Material to promote ease of use… and re-use. We will reprint the article below, and you can view the original here:

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A few months ago, unleaded client and asked me an interesting question. That question was how does one reconcil the tension between specific parts or hardware vs. the functional use in the product of those parts. This client was from a major fortune 500 company with a bill of material (BOM) containing thousands of parts on each product. I was a bit taken aback, at first, by this question. Although it is a very difficult question and subject, I assumed that most major companies were old hands at dealing with this tension. I was wrong.

This reminded me that something that might seem old hat or common sense to one person, might be very interesting to another. For example, when I graduated from the university and went to work for Ford Motor Company, I was taught that the Ford part numbering system. Ford uses a system for parts that is an intelligent part numbering system, in which the part number makes it obvious which product programs , functional type of hardware, and what version of the part is being described

Hiller Associates - Intelligent Part Numbers

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This system of numbering parts has been around for goodness knows how long. It is no great secret in the auto industry. I’m sure every person at Chrysler, GM, the foreign auto companies know the Ford system of numbering parts. In fact, apparently , eBay even teaches us about the Ford part numbering system. It’s very straightforward and makes complete sense. As a young engineer, fresh out of school, who didn’t know any better, I assumed that every company had a similar intelligent part numbering system. However, when I gained a little bit more experience and maturity, I realized that Ford’s ingenious but simple system was not so common sense at all throughout industry. In fact, most companies I have met in manufacturing have nothing more than a sequential part numbering system that tells nothing about the part for which you were looking.

The point here is not for me to glorify the Ford part numbering system. I’m sure there are companies with even better and more intelligent part numbering systems out there. In fact, we don’t even have to go back into the horrors of the group technology fad in the late eighties or early nineties to know that! No, my point is that relatively simple and logical ways of classifying (but not over classifying things!) on the BOM can really help us in our management of engineering parts and the product.

Therefore, in the next few weeks, I plan to post a series of articles that talk about these ways that we can view the bill of material and help ourselves and our company. I look forward to hearing what other experts in the product life cycle management will have to say in comments.