Master mixed model production for heavy equipment
Industry demand for mass customization, regulatory demand for greater sustainability and safety, as well as a supply chain that spans the globe, are creating tremendous amounts of complexity for your manufacturing operations. How will you manage it all to supply heavy equipment that your customers demand and regulators approve of?
The answer lies in mixed model production of your heavy equipment using smart manufacturing solutions.
Growing product configurations of heavy equipment
Heavy equipment companies must deal with an increasing number of complexities from a manufacturing point of view, including mixed model production, customization and large assemblies. They must handle a growing number of configurations, in low volumes, spread over multiple plants globally. In addition, their customers increasingly expect them to remain flexible for product change requests, even after orders have been placed.
Efficiently handling these challenges requires a comprehensive digitalization of manufacturing operations through a strong holistic solution. Homegrown solutions and multiple isolated systems can create roadblocks that lead to delays, loss of quality, rework and ultimately, additional cost. You need to gain control over all the complexity that is added to your manufacturing process and increase operational efficiency by sharing data between the various teams within your manufacturing organization.
Make smart decisions with dedicated solutions for mixed model production
Creating and managing best practices for all the new, complex processes that have emerged with the rising variety of components, the higher degree of customization and the growing number of suppliers is essential. The key to managing this complexity while increasing efficiency is to have a single source of truth between different teams within manufacturing—including planning, execution and quality. This unlocks more effective communication and collaboration because everyone works from a comprehensive view.
If you can combine the knowledge of all those teams, you can evaluate the manufacturing processes for all steps of the process, and improve various KPIs including resource uptime, productivity, flexibility, efficiency of operations, sustainability and output quality. Part manufacturing best practices are also automatically generated and primed for reuse. Then, with data collected from execution, you can study and further improve cycle times, throughput and line balancing to accomplish profitability with mixed model production.
Manufacturers who can quickly adopt efficient processes to produce highly configurable heavy equipment will move towards a more sustainable and profitable future compared to competitors who move slower towards innovation.
Build know-how through a collaborative manufacturing approach
A collaborative approach allows heavy equipment manufacturers to optimize planning and execution of complex processes and build manufacturing intelligence based on data collected during operations. All participants in the extended manufacturing process, from design, to planning, to execution, can gather the knowledge to improve resource allocation and better coordinate multiple processes across the enterprise.
Scheduling and production planning software as well as manufacturing execution system software can be part of a smart manufacturing approach to achieve full visibility and traceability of your production.
Advanced scheduling software for production, including sequencing and managing constraints can help you achieve the following benefits:
- Optimizing utilization
- Reducing changeovers
- Lowering inventory
- Improving on-time delivery
- Modeling complex requirements
Siemens manufacturing execution solutions provide greater process flexibility and efficiency, complete integration of regulatory and quality requirements, synchronized production processes for optimal supply-chain management and sustained reductions in maintenance and operation costs.​
Get started with your journey towards a faster, more cost-effective, accurate and flexible production system in the complex world of heavy equipment.
Visit our resource page for a high-level overview of Smart Manufacturing for heavy equipment.
Learn more about the re-use of best practices to drive standardization:
Ebook: Apply best practices for complexity management in manufacturing
Blog: Smart manufacturing solutions for heavy equipment
Resource collection: Optimize planning and scheduling for heavy equipment
Resource collection: Meet ambitious production goals
