SOLIDWORKS Electrical Allows for a More Precise Bill of Material

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The term manufacturer takes on many meanings. For a lot of us along the gulf coast, that participate in the oil and gas and marine industries, it usually means custom, low-volume solutions, generally with short lead times.  Busy manufacturing floors, packed with projects as varied as the customers.  A dizzying array of parts flowing onto the receiving dock in a constant stream of delivery trucks.  The general sense of urgency as a group of dedicated technicians and engineers work from the office to the warehouse to the shop floor.  The whole experience is akin to a beehive, bustling and productive. What can make this process more efficient? SOLIDWORKS Electrical offers a variety of solutions.

Manufacturing companies vary widely in what they produce, but they all have one thing in common, a highly skilled workforce capable of interpreting customer requirements, making quick decisions and delivering a quality product on spec and on time with little direction in the form of detailed engineering drawings.

So if fully detailed engineering documentation isn’t a requirement for your production process, what is?  If the traits reviewed above describe your organization, you’re probably stewing on the answer as you read this article …. bill of material (BOM) accuracy.  You’re also likely irritated thinking about the last time a basic electrical drawing coupled with an inaccurate, disjointed excel BOM threw your entire production system into disarray.

BOM accuracy isn’t just about delayed delivery.  It’s also about lost efficiency and project margin.  It’s about the engineer that needs to put down his or her current work and scramble to find parts.  It’s about the added expediting fees.  It’s about the Sales Representative that now has to have a very unpleasant conversation with a customer.  It’s about the technician who now has to find another project to work on.  You don’t need to be a 6 Sigma guru to know the lost productivity involved in rearranging production schedules to keep a technician producing.  BOM mistakes affect the entire organization.

So how do you balance the need for an accurate BOM with the advantage of having only to produce minimal documentation to produce the desired result?  SOLIDWORKS Electrical’s flexible structure provides a suite of tools designed to provide your highly proficient technicians with enough information to meet customer requirements without spending months on the design documentation while maintaining the integrity of the bill of material.

SOLIDWORKS Electrical’s one line drawing tools allow an engineer to specify components required for a project, how they are connected, and the general location of the component, without needing to spend time on unnecessary detail.

 

Component tools within SOLIDWORKS Electrical allow the engineer to tie manufacturer specific parts to symbols on the online.  The database-driven drawing updates the BOM automatically when changes are made, mitigating the chance a change to the drawing won’t be picked up in the BOM.

Finally, easy to set up macros allow engineers the ability to reuse design data, pulling in both schematic symbols and BOM info.

At the end of the day, you need tools that let you do what you do best, produce great products and serve your customers.  Let MLC CAD Systems show you how SOLIDWORKS Electrical can provide your production team with accurate bills of materials, without changing how you work.

MLC CAD Systems

MLC CAD Systems

Celebrating Three Decades of Unbeatable Service! MLC CAD System's mission is to help design and manufacturing companies, entrepreneurs, creative individuals, research institutions and other organizations put their ideas and products into production using the industry's best software technologies including SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD, Mastercam, & Markforged 3D printers well as other leading CAD and CAM technologies.
MLC CAD Systems

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MLC CAD Systems