With many manufacturers, there is a lack of integration between manufacturing process planning, EBOM, MBOM, and work instructions. Manufacturing process plans and work instructions typically operate in silos that are disconnected from product development. These gaps create challenges in traceability and make it challenging to keep data synchronized – directly impacting product quality, costs, and time to market.
With Aras Manufacturing Process Planning (MPP), engineers can transform EBOM to MBOM while building the Bill of Process (BOP) into discreet steps. BOM reconciliation is made easy and embedded with factory floor ready assembly instructions to maintain as-designed to as-planned traceability. This connection between product development and manufacturing enables new capabilities such as the digital twin.
According to CIMdata, “Aras’ MPP application provides a solution to manage the EBOM to MBOM transformation. By using a manufacturing process plan to derive the MBOM, data integrity can be preserved, and EBOM changes propagated to the process plan, MBOM, and work instructions. Manual work that has to be repeated for every change or variant is automated, reducing time spent minimizing errors, improving quality, and lowering cost.”
Based on Aras MPP Presentation:
Figure 1: Manufacturing BOM Showing Consumption from EBOM
Integrated Approach to Extend the Digital Thread
The Aras application offers an integrated approach to managing manufacturing data and processes in PLM. By enabling concurrent authoring of location-specific process plans, work instructions, and manufacturing bill of materials derived from the engineering bill of material – users can concurrently author process plans, MBOMs, and work instructions to improve efficiencies in managing manufacturing data and processes. This process improves the digital thread traceability across the lifecycle.
Graphical Interface with Synchronized Data
Users can create visually rich electronic work instructions concurrently with the process plan from the hierarchical process plan tree or from the work instruction view. Using drag-and-drop from the workbench, you can quickly author the process plan. The workbench is pre-populated with the multi-level EBOM parts and other items like resources and skills. Documents can also be added to build the process plan.
Concurrent Process Plan and MBOM Creation
Users can create MBOMs concurrently with the process plan, as the process plan is authored by defining the produced part and the parts consumed at the operations. Users can add phantoms, consumables, tooling, and other resources to create comprehensive plans. Using drag-and-drop editing to restructure the MBOM while maintaining the digital thread to plan traceability, users can view real-time automatic reconciliation indicators for part consumption between EBOM and MBOM.
Visually Rich Work Instructions
Users can get the manufacturing view of the EBOM and the engineering view of the MBOM. You can also add text media and tabular content to the work instructions that can be published and distributed to the factory floor. Multiple users can edit different levels of the multi-level MBOM at the same time.
Figure 2: Process Plan and Assembly / Work Instructions
Razorleaf MPP Services
Razorleaf offers a few MPP customizations to automate some of its capabilities. The first one is the automatic notification or process creation to notify Manufacturing when Engineering revises components used in an MBOM. This gives a manufacturer the opportunity to determine if their manufacturing processes are impacted by Engineering’s change. Another customization is the generation of the MBOM from the EBOM. The MBOM can be created as a flattened MBOM or as a structured MBOM with sub-process plans that mirror the EBOM structure. View some example screenshots of this functionality below.
EBOM Structure
ACTIONS
Structured MBOM
Flat MBOM
Manufacturers can eliminate time-consuming manual processes and costly EBOM/MBOM conflicts by automating the manufacturing process planning with Aras – enabling a digital thread. Users can improve efficiency by synchronizing process plans, MBOMs, and work instructions to ensure product quality, reduce costs, and accelerate time-to-market.
Razorleaf offers MPP Configuration Workshops, so please contact us to help you get started on your MPP Journey with Aras.
