Achieving robust software integration is a crucial first step toward weaving a strong, effective, and productive digital thread
In today’s increasingly divided world, open communication is more important than ever. This holds true when talking to neighbors, friends, and family, just as it is for the manufacturing community, which seeks (or should seek) to break down the silos of information that stifle efficiency and hamper forward progress. But where humans must connect to one another with humility and an open mind, manufacturers depend on integration and interoperability (using a common language) between their disparate software platforms. Without a healthy measure of both, there can be no digital thread.
It’s been a long time coming. Patrick Hanratty of General Electric Co. invented what many consider the first commercial CAM system—PRONTO (Program for Numerical Tooling)—in 1957. And, according to Autodesk, the first “true” CAD systems came online six years later when MIT student Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad for his doctoral thesis.
Kudos to both of those gentlemen and to all the tech-savvy people who came after; they not only made these tools practically inseparable but infinitely more powerful. But their work isn’t done. If the industry is to eliminate silos, CAD/CAM and other software tools need to become virtual “Chatty Cathys” that can seamlessly share information with a company’s ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, MES (manufacturing execution system), TMS (tool management system), and PLM (product lifecycle management) platforms, as well as with CNC machine tools. Furthermore, the data exchange must also extend to the digital twin, whose growing use by automakers and other sectors will fundamentally change how manufacturers of all sizes operate.
Meghan West, president and CEO of Mastercam-developer CNC Software LLC, Tolland, Conn., knows one of these latter-day pioneers quite well. In fact, she often has dinner with him. West’s father is Mark Summers, who founded CNC Software in 1983 and has been raising the CAD/CAM bar ever since. Said West, “Think of where we’ve come since those early days when we operated via snail mail and fax machines.” She laughed. “When I was a kid, I’d fax smiley faces to my uncle, and my dad got so many letters in the mail that I started a stamp collection. Compare that to our current technology.”
West noted that the CAD/CAM industry has changed in fundamental ways since her days as a stamp collector, as has the business of manufacturing.
Users today share society’s expectations for instant gratification, she said, and demand fast, automated, and, above all, integrated software. “We’re constantly reminded that the manufacturing process is immensely complex, and that CAD/CAM is just one small piece of it. There’s inspection. There’s shop floor management. There’s robotics and simulation. Each presents us with a tremendous amount of data that must be transferred to other processes, seamlessly and without error.”
It’s because of this need that West and her team have worked hard to integrate Mastercam with external systems. The company provides add-ons to dozens of external software providers, among them tool management from TDM Systems, Haimer offline tool presetting, post-processing from CAMplete, cloud-based tool data providers MDM Tooling and MachiningCloud, and numerous others covering the full gamut of machine shop operations.
“At the beginning of our manufacturing journey, everything was stand-alone,” she said. “The CAM developers did their own thing, the CAD companies another, and the tooling providers went their own way as well. Now, there’s significant data sharing between all of these, with more on the way. I don’t know that we as an industry have capitalized on that quite yet or been able to leverage that sharing in a smart, automated way, but it’s definitely the direction we and others are taking.”
Alan Levine, managing director of Boston-based Open Mind Technologies USA (with global headquarters in Germany), agrees with West’s assessments regarding the need for increased integration with external software systems. A CAD/CAM pioneer himself—his entrance into the software industry coincided with that of West’s father—also noted that collaboration with third-party providers is crucial to supporting these efforts.These partnerships extend to machine tool and control builders as well as numerous cutting tool providers, whose customers require effective, easy-to-use CAM systems and advanced toolpaths to leverage modern CNC technology.
As with Mastercam’s, the Open Mind website shows dozens of such companies, from Celeritive with its VoluMill product to Hummingbird’s MES. Open Mind, which developed the hyperMILL CAD/CAM suite, felt so strongly about the benefits of MES integration for job shop manufacturers that it purchased a majority share of Hummingbird earlier this year. “Manufacturers seek partnerships with us because we can help drive them forward or, working together, achieve new standards,” Levine said.
One notable partnership began in 2017, when Open Mind solicited Emuge-Franken to support its requirements for conical-barrel cutters, aka circle segment end mills, which could work in tandem with hyperMILL’s five-axis toolpaths. For those unfamiliar with the technology, it involves using a round cutting tool containing a small section of a much larger radius, essentially mimicking what a ballnose end mill could accomplish if it measured several feet or more in diameter.
According to Levine, this provides much faster machining via reduced cycle times, due to dramatically fewer step-downs, and also leads to improved surface finish quality and tool life. “When we started developing this technology, most everyone was skeptical,” he said. “Today, it’s becoming a mainstream process as more and more cutting tool manufacturers and CAM developers jump on board. It’s a great story that illustrates what’s possible through collaboration. We’ve helped drive the industry forward.”
Although far from the only beneficiary, the auto industry, with its massive forming dies and extensive mold-making requirements, stands to see significant cycle-time reductions thanks to circle-segment cutting technology.
Nand Kochhar, vice-president of automotive and transportation industry for Siemens Digital Industries Software, Plano, Texas, has plenty to say about software integration and its impact on product development. “Design to engineering to manufacturing integration is one of the key enablers of shortened development cycles, not to mention improved product quality,” he said. “It does so by using a single source of truth throughout the vehicle’s life cycle, starting with the design process and carrying through to simulation, manufacturing, and operations. This can only be achieved by using advanced, connected systems for CAD, CAE, CAM, and MOM [manufacturing operations management].”
Kochhar pointed to the recent partnership between Siemens and Hyundai Motor Group as one example of this integration. In late 2021, the automaker announced it was replacing some of its legacy software with the well-known NX and Teamcenter systems from Siemens’ Xcelerator—an open digital business platform.
In the SMB market, Austria-based automotive supplier Pollmann International GmbH implemented NX and Teamcenter along with several tools from Siemens’ Tecnomatix manufacturing portfolio. The company no longer relies on multiple stand-alone CAD/CAM/CAE packages or its outdated file-based product management system. Now it enjoys the many benefits of an integrated PLM platform, advanced simulation capabilities, high-performance machining and a comprehensive workflow.
Success stories aside, Kochhar suggested that Siemens (and the broader software industry) are just getting started. “Advances in CAD, CAE and CAM integration have been going on for years, but we continue to expand on our capabilities and usability,” he said. “For instance, software automation greatly streamlines design and process development efforts while eliminating any chance of data duplication. And the introduction of A.I. [artificial intelligence] and machine learning certainly helps to shrink the time needed to build models, run simulations, and program machining processes, but also helps our customers solve difficult problems.”
Robust integration of these and other manufacturing systems serves yet another role, and it’s one that many in the industry might overlook: Integration enables the digital twin, Kochhar explained, which he defines as a virtual representation of an object or system’s physical entities. Consider an autonomous vehicle. The digital twin begins gathering information during the design phase. This continues onto the manufacturing floor, the assembly line, and because the vehicle contains a wealth of sensors, our roadways.
Said Kochhar, “Siemens’ Xcelerator brings together all parts of the product and production lifecycle from generative design and virtual commissioning to breakthrough manufacturing technologies and into operation. Through it all, the digital twin’s owner enjoys a closed-loop correlation of the physical to the analytical world, leading to all manner of potential benefits including greater visibility, troubleshooting abilities, and opportunities for continuous improvement. It’s what Siemens refers to as a comprehensive digital twin.”
Vance Martin, senior manager for Mechatronics Design Software, 3DExperience Works, at Dassault Systèmes Americas Corp., Waltham, Mass., offered another analogy. At first glance, a fish farm has nothing to do with manufacturing or electromechanical assemblies, until one stops to consider that it’s a fluid system like any other, filled with pumps, valves, tanks, and lines, each of which must be sized appropriately for efficient functioning.
“Instead of designing all that stuff in CAD and then throwing it over the wall to a simulation tool as we did in the pre-integration world, an engineer today can model and analyze everything in a single integrated environment,” said Martin. “From there, the various components can flow into the CAM software for machining and fabrication, to the ERP system for procurement, and so on, all of which share information. Everyone in the company is collaborating on the same object and using the same platform instead of communicating between their disparate islands.”
Martin is quick to point out that no platform is a one-size-fits-all solution, and that companies of different sizes and industries will need different solutions. “It’s therefore beholden upon us and others to provide customizable portfolios that match their unique requirements. So whether it’s a machine tool builder, a fabricating shop, or a company that designs and installs fish farms, they should only have to buy what they need to get their job done, and do so in a digital, integrated manner. From our side, that’s the 3DExperience platform.”
Paul Van Metre’s product offering takes a different approach by pulling in a number of much-needed capabilities from manufacturing, to quality, and front-end administration into a single manufacturing software system—ProShop ERP—thus eliminating the need for multiple packages that may or may not share information.
The co-founder of ProShop USA Inc. in Bellingham, Wash., Van Metre refers to this as the Digital Manufacturing Ecosystem, or DME, which covers the usual ERP functions such as inventory control, purchasing, and MRP as well as more shop floor-specific features found in dedicated MES, QMS, TMS, and “a whole bunch of other software acronyms, all vital and necessary for a machine shop to operate efficiently today.”
Ironically, Van Metre said he and his colleagues had no intention of becoming software developers when they opened a machine shop in 1997. But after finding existing ERP packages lacking, they decided to write their own. In 2014, they sold the shop and went all in on their eponymous software system, taking it to market two years later. “We’d lived in the shoes of shop owners for 17 years and know how incredibly hard that business is,” said Van Metre. “There are a million chances to get one thing wrong and scrap an entire job alongside a narrow path to get everything right. Our goal is to help shops navigate that path.”
Here again, integration plays a central part in this navigation. For example, when a user builds a tool ID in ProShop ERP, she can export it directly into the shop’s CAM system. She can direct the system to read G-code files, parse out the tool information, and pull it into the purchasing and scheduling modules. She also knows what cutting tools are in use on the shop floor, where they are, what jobs need them, and whether to order more. Van Metre noted that ProShop ERP does not manage the general ledger, payables, or receivables, but “does all the heavy lifting in terms of job costing and WIP [work-in-progress], and integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks and several other accounting packages.”
For the bean counters in the group, this last part might be troublesome, but it’s probably a small price to pay for ProShop’s non-financial features and functionality.
“While the majority of our customer base is comprised of small to medium shops, ProShop is adept at managing complex manufacturing systems addressing multiple layers of compliance and regulatory requirements,” Van Metre noted.
“It’s also paperless. When COVID hit and machine shops were sending people home, they were unable to hand off physical job jackets to their estimators, purchasing agents, and other personnel. It turned out many customers increased their efficiencies by having certain employees work remotely, something they would never have been able to do without a true, all-digital, and integrated shop management system.”
Connect With Us
