Electrolux Implements Digital Manufacturing Worldwide
With Tecnomatix and Teamcenter, Electrolux creates a uniform, digital manufacturing process.
Electrolux AB, based in Stockholm, Sweden, sells appliances for household and commercial use in 150 countries around the world. With around 58,000 employees and 46 production sites, the company develops and manufactures products of numerous brands: in addition to Electrolux, the top brands Grand Cuisine, AEG, Zanussi, Frigidaire and Westinghouse enjoy a particularly high reputation. Today they produce 600,000 stoves and 1,400,000 cooking ranges per year for the European market.
The factory is too expensive to use as an experimental field. To test new concepts, there are efficient simulation tools that make production downtime superfluous.
Bernd Ebert, Director of Global Manufacturing Engineering − Food Preparation
Recently, Electrolux began selecting software for its global platform for digital manufacturing. In 2012, Teamcenter was deployed as a strategically important product development platform for product lifecycle management at Electrolux. Discussions about Siemens’ future strategy led to an offer to test a pre-release version of the 3D layout software Line Designer in an early adopter program.
The main reasons for this decision were the advantages of tight Teamcenter integration of these solutions: “We can save all resources created with Line Designer as libraries in Teamcenter, manage them and make them available to all users worldwide,” explains Ebert. “This way we preserve an entire infrastructure of software and hardware including training material and can build on the existing users´ experience with Teamcenter. ” The expected results were a close alliance for product development and a global, common platform for factory planning and material flow optimization.
When Electrolux started searching for digital manufacturing software they were facing these business challenges:
- Create globally uniform production facilities and assembly processes
- Achieve higher efficiency in the assembly process and material flow
- Develop, test and optimize automation concepts
- Combine product development with production planning
Electrolux found the following keys to success during their digital manufacturing adoption period:
- Worldwide implementation of Teamcenter for Manufacturing
- 3D factory planning using Line Designer with Central libraries
- Robot Simulations with Process Simulate
- Checking of material flow and train routes, simulation, and optimization of assembly processes with Plant Simulation.
After the process was over, the results came in:
- Saved $2 Million in buffer space and associated investments
- Protected plant designs and investments
- Ramped up new plants without errors and delays.
We can save all resources created with Line Designer as libraries in Teamcenter, manage them and make them available to all users worldwide.
Bernd Ebert, Director of Global Manufacturing Engineering − Food Preparation
Check out the full story of Electrolux’s digital manufacturing journey.
