10 Ways Design-To-Manufacturing Drives More Revenue
Bottom Line: Speeding up new product development cycles, improving product quality and increasing yield rates happen when manufacturers unify diverse production systems encompassing simulation/Finite Element Analysis (FEA), Electrical, Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Inspection, work instructions, and ERP systems to create a unified design-to-manufacturing platform.
Getting the diverse base of manufacturing systems in sync with each other opens up new opportunities for manufacturers to grow revenue. Not only are long-standing production inefficiencies eradicated, but there are also new opportunities to improve time-to-market for make-to-stock and configure-to-order products. The challenge is that every system has a completely different clock speed or cadence, with ERP systems being built for transaction accuracy, speed, and scale.
Manufacturing’s Inflection Point Is Here
The more integrated product design, engineering, and production are the more likely it’s going to be able to flex and scale in response to customers’ demands. Product models need only be defined once in the CAD system to serve as the multifaceted information needs of each phase of manufacturing. When simulation/FEA, Electrical, Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Inspection, work instructions, and ERP systems all share a common, product quality improves, customer delivery dates get met and new products are delivering on time.
Taking on short-notice production runs that deliver higher revenue and margins become possible. Taking a design-to-manufacturing approach to integrating every aspect of manufacturing makes it possible to fulfill customers’ requests cost breakdown analyses by product configuration with their larger orders or audit data to meet international quality standards.
Manufacturing’s inflection point is being driven by the need to speed up new product development cycles, constantly improve product quality, and find new insights into how yield rates can be increased. The future belongs to manufacturers who seize intelligence and use it to compete and win more customers. By unifying the diverse systems of simulation/FEA, Electrical, Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Inspection, work instructions, and ERP systems manufacturers are able to accelerate time-to-market for new products, meet tight customer delivery dates, and improve quality.
10 Ways Design To Manufacturing Drives More Revenue
Companies who excel at providing customers the freedom they want today for customizing products stand the greatest chance of dominating their markets five years from now. Design-to-manufacturing is the roadmap manufacturers are relying on closing the gaps between designers, engineers quality management and production teams. Presented below are ten ways Design-to-Manufacturing drives more revenue:
- Eliminating disconnects between what engineering designed and what manufacturing can produce leads to more sales at higher gross margins. Design to manufacturing closes the many gaps between engineering and manufacturing, enabling manufacturers to improve time-to-market and also create the design, produce and sell more profitable customizable products. By unifying simulation/FEA, electrical, Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), inspection, work instructions, and ERP systems into a single platform, manufacturers are driving higher gross margins too. Real-time integration enables all of these systems to share engineering and manufacturing data, further closing configuration gaps and driving more revenue.
- Opens up new global markets by being able to personalize products at scale increasing Total Available Market (TAM) revenue size and growth. Localizing products doesn’t have to take months or years. When a design to manufacturing strategy is in place, product managers, markets, and engineers only have to change a product model once for a new national or regional market. Design to manufacturing increases the speed and scale of global expansion by simplifying product configuration management over lifecycles.
- Real-time fine-tuning of new product features that specific customer segments want is now possible using design to manufacturing, accelerating sales cycles in the process. When designers, engineering, quality, and manufacturing can see how their product designs impact customer delivery dates via the design to manufacturing platform, both teams can work with product management to fine-tune product requirements in real-time to unique customer needs and drive more sales.
- Speeding up product development lifecycles for new customizable products that more perfectly meet customers’ requirements, delivering new revenue is a major benefit of design to manufacturing. The majority of a new product revenue ramps sharply up in the first six months following the launch of a new product. By capitalizing on the unique cadences or clock speeds of every step in the production process, design to manufacturing platforms enables manufacturers to reach a new level of customer responsiveness and product quality and maximize launch revenue. By unifying these diverse systems, manufacturers are slicing through the performance paradox of product configuration, delivering excellent quality products while meeting challenging delivery dates.
- Closing product configuration gaps with design to manufacturing improve customer order accuracy, fulfillment speed and product quality creating greater customer loyalty and follow-on sales. The gaps between simulation/ FEA, electrical, Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), inspection, work instructions and ERP systems cost manufacturers’ valuable time that’s spent solving order problems instead of excelling on each customer order. When these two systems are orchestrated on a common design to manufacturing platform, time-to-customer improves due to the unique cadences or operating speed of each system being synchronized with each other. The result is greater follow-on revenue from satisfied customers.
- Extending the sales of best-selling products by adding new features to product models without disrupting existing production workflows is possible using design to manufacturing strategy. Design to manufacturing is based on a single, unified product data model stored in the CAD system that flexes changes as customers’ preferences shift to new features or options. The best aspect of having a unified product data model is that the existing one being used in production can be duplicated then modified to support product line enhancements fast. Design to manufacturing extends the life of best-selling products by managing the many feature and product attributes including effectivity, product modularization, product model definition, and master data models.
- Improve the balance of revenue across configurable products to sell higher-margin models while reducing margin exposure for the less profitable configurations using the insights gained from the design to manufacturing platform. When design, engineering, quality, and manufacturing all share the same data and manufacturing intelligence, it’s much easier to align the entire company on designing, selling and building the most profitable configurable products. Design to manufacturing closes the gaps that make expensive pricing and profit margin mistakes happen.
- Increase pricing accuracy and estimates by using the automated, real-time manufacturing cost estimation capacities inherent in the design to manufacturing platform. When each products’ model is the system of record for essential costing and pricing data, real-time manufacturing cost estimation improves. Manufacturing has greater visibility into standard, direct, and indirect costs and can better manage production workflows to generate the highest margins possible.
- Quoting accuracy improves by providing sales and marketing with a single definition of every product that can be sold in a make-to-stock, configure-to-order or engineer-to-order configurations leading to more sales. Design to manufacturing enables manufacturers to move beyond the constraints that held them back from pursuing Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) and product configuration strategies. When a single product model contains all the configuration data needed to scale from make-to-stock to engineer-to-order without requiring manual input data or additional work
- Automatically propagate product and design changes across all functional areas to accelerate new products to market while improving product quality. Design to manufacturing speeds up new product development cycles, improves product quality, and increases yield rates. With a single product model serving as the master representation of the product, engineering, quality, and production can complete tasks concurrently and further increase sales while reducing costs.
