In-depth analysis tagged Digital Manufacturing — covering PLM history, vendor strategy, and the technical decisions reshaping engineering software.
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Digital manufacturing is the discipline of creating and using an integrated, computer-based system that includes simulation, 3D visualization, analytics, and collaborative tools to define, plan, create, monitor, and control manufacturing processes. It connects the engineering BOM to the manufacturing BOM through virtual factory models, process simulation, and tooling definitions — before the first physical part is made. Tecnomatix (now Siemens), Delmia (Dassault), and PTC MPMLink are the major platforms in this category.
Manufacturing process planning is the translation of a product's engineering definition into how it will be made: the sequence of operations, the work centers and machines assigned to each, the tooling, fixtures and materials consumed, the work instructions and the quality checkpoints. Its outputs are the manufacturing BOM and the routing, which ERP schedules against and MES executes.
A routing is the detailed sequence of operations that a product goes through during manufacturing — the workstations, work centers, labor, equipment, tooling, and inspection points required to build the product from raw materials to finished goods. Each routing operation is a step: station 1 (weld frame), station 5 (paint), station 8 (assemble dash), station 12 (final test). The routing is derived from the mBOM during process planning and is executed by MES, which captures actual labor, time, scrap, and deviations against the planned routing.
