Enterprise Accountability: Striking a Balance through Technology & Automation

For example, whenever there is a change in a 3D design, we support automatic notifications to the people who are impacted by it, by way of notifications on mobile devices, and emails delivered straight to employee inboxes.

In addition, we are currently building automation tools that are powered by the Glovius cloud. Anytime a change occurs in a product design, a select set of derivative formats are recreated in the Glovius cloud, thereby ensuring everyone has access to the latest information. This helps reduce errors and saves precious time. We are constantly adding more formats in this automation system and will soon support report generation into the system.

HCL develops CAMWorks which has a powerful feature-based, knowledge-based machining technology that can save CNC programming time by 50%. CAMWorks is a plugin that supports all of the major CAD formats. We have augmented it with Tolerance Based Machining which can access Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI) embedded inside 3D CAD models to suggest suitable machining strategies to achieve the desired tolerances. Recently introduced CAMWorks Additive provides an integrated workflow for additive and subtractive manufacturing inside the SOLIDWORKS environment and substantially eases post-processing operations for metal additive manufacturing.

These are some small ways we are helping access to information, saving time, and thereby improving accountability in the system.

Jennifer Herron: How do HCL’s products enable accountability through human processes?

Swadhin Bhide: HCL’s products focus on the user-interface and ease of use. HCL’s solution does not introduce a completely new process in the system but helps organizations improve the discipline and rigor of the existing processes.

For example, traditionally, organizations have learned to live with re-work costs because the time to first release has been measured. HCL’s solution helps design engineers achieve the first-time-right approach by helping them correct the issues before submitting the design. Via reports, DFMPro supports collaboration between design and manufacturing or suppliers, thus bringing upfront proactive communication into the design review process, improving traceability, and reducing number of potential design iterations.

With knowledge-based machining, CAMWorks allows expert users to store their knowledge as machining strategies in the CAMWorks Technology database, which can be re-used by the entire organization and next generation engineers. It facilitates standardization, knowledge sharing, and significant improvement in the productivity.

Our products democratize the access to 3D information, which was once available only to a very small subset of people in a company.

Today’s employees within an organization need access to design data, wherever and whenever they want. This access considerably widens the scope of usage of design information in an enterprise and helps people collaborate across the traditional departmental and role-based silos. We believe this improved access to information and tools for collaboration has a direct correlation with accountability.

Jennifer Herron: Do humans understand the need for Verification and Validation due to the volume of 3D data we are now producing with modern CAD systems? Is the volume of data driving the need for automation?

Refer to definitions for V&V from the PMBOK Guide:

• Validation. The assurance that a product, service, or system meets the needs of the customer and other identified stakeholders.
• Verification. The evaluation of whether or not a product, service, or system complies with a regulation, requirement, specification, or imposed condition.

Swadhin Bhide: Humans understand the need for verification and validation; however, they may shy away from the same due to complexity of implementation as a result of the growing volume of data. As companies move from 2D to 3D, increases in the volume of data are definitely driving the need for automation.

As an example, one of our customers in Japan used Glovius to digitize their technician’s workflow.

Jennifer Herron: What value can be achieved by an enterprise when using HCL’s products for accountability solutions?

Swadhin Bhide: HCL’s DFMPro solution ensures that traditional design reviews for downstream processes are performed with higher rigor and the accountability is spread across the enterprise by helping design engineers confirm their designs, manufacturing and quality engineers review the designs via reports that have designer comments, and then sharing such reports proactively with the supply chain to improve communication and reduce design iterations. In this manner, organizations derive significant value through reduced re-work and product cost, improved product quality, and faster time to market.

Glovius and eDrawings Publishers enable access to 3D information across the extended enterprise. This access to 3D data drives innovation and accountability across the value chain.

Jennifer Herron: How has the demand for HCL’s products’ accountability functionality evolved as industries’ 3D model-based processes have matured?

Swadhin Bhide: As organizations churn more and more volume of 3D data and their supply chain becomes highly global, they find that design iterations late in the product lifecycle cost them much more than earlier. Due to this, organizations are relying on DFMPro and the DFX platform to bring accountability into the system by leveraging the automation, PLM integration, and collaboration facilities. They have been using the upfront design validation capabilities to not only help design engineers ship designs right the first time but also use the reports to get supplier sign-offs. This has shortened time to market.

With increasing adoption of model-based-processes, organizations want to leverage 3D data for driving manufacturing and doing away with 2D drawings. This means that machining solutions need to access PMI (3D annotations and embedded attributes) contained in 3D CAD models and assist the machinist in getting the part manufactured to the right tolerances without relying on 2D drawings. This has led to increased adoption of CAMWorks for its Tolerance Based Machining capabilities coupled with feature-based and knowledge-based machining technology.

In today’s global enterprises and workplaces, collaboration and standardization are the need of the hour. We are constantly challenged by our customers, industry forums, and independent consumer bodies to support standardized workflows and data formats, and to provide collaboration tools that work whenever and wherever users need them. We believe this is an important step in enabling accountability across the enterprise.

As more and more companies adopt new 3D model-based processes, we are on the constant lookout for integration and automation opportunities that help remove data and process silos within an organization and across the value chain.

Jennifer Herron: How do HCL’s products drive model-based process accountability through automatic and human means for the following categories? (Geometry, GD&T, Annotations, Attributes, Presentation States, Derivatives (STEP and Viewers), Manufacturing Plans, and Manufacturing Instructions)

Swadhin Bhide: HCL’s products leverage Geometry, Tolerances, Annotations, and Attributes from the model to ensure that the design is as per downstream requirements such as manufacturing and assembly best practices. HTML, Excel, and eDrawings reports are generated with automatically embedded design review comments, which help humans in the system review and collaborate.

As creators of Glovius, a modern CAD viewer for Windows, iOS and Android, and eDrawings Publishers, we provide software tools to enable interoperability and collaboration processes across the extended enterprise.

We strive to provide 100% accurate 3D representations of CAD models, based on Geometry, Tolerances, Attributes and additional PMI annotations. We enable creation of derivative formats like 3D PDF, 3D HTML, and STL that can be used in downstream processes, enabling accessibility of information across the enterprise.

By providing simple and easy to use standards-based tools, we help drive process accountability in collaboration, manufacturing, inspection and procurement processes.

Jennifer Herron: What excites HCL the most about 3D CIC 2018?

Swadhin Bhide: The theme of Enterprise Accountability is an exciting aspect of 3D CIC 2018 because, for an organization to be successful, it is important for everyone in the system to be accountable for the quality and timeliness of their deliverables. Traditional “over the wall” approaches which worked when organizations dealt with a small volume of data and were single-storied entities operating from a single location fail miserably in today’s global manufacturing scenario. Hence, the theme of Enterprise Accountability links itself effectively with the collaboration and interoperability aspect of the conference.

Interoperability and collaboration are at the heart of what we do. Our mission is to provide access to 3D data across the extended enterprise, in a modern and cost-effective manner. Enabling access to 3D data, and providing tools to analyze, consume, and collaborate on the data is a first step towards a responsible, successful, and accountable enterprise.

Swadhin Bhide

Director, Products & Technologies
HCL Technologies Ltd.

Swadhin Bhide is Director of Product Management at HCL Technologies Limited. He has over 17 years of experience in computer aided design/manufacturing software product development. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Mumbai University and Master’s degree in Design Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company that helps global enterprises re-imagine and transform their businesses through digital technology transformation. Through innovative technology solutions built around Digital, IoT, Cloud, Automation, Cybersecurity, Analytics, Infrastructure Management, and Engineering Services, HCL solves complex business problems. The portfolio of HCL Technologies includes IP products such as CAMWorks®, Glovius, NestLib, Feature Recognition, etc.

DFMPro, a CAD-integrated design for manufacturing software helps you identify and correct downstream issues early in the design stage, leading to reduction of cycle time and, in turn, resulting in high-quality products with lower product development costs.

CAMWorks is an intuitive, feature-based CAM software that helps to increase productivity using best-in-class technologies and adaptable automation tools to maximize CNC machining efficiency.

Glovius is a modern CAD Viewer for desktop, mobile & cloud. With support for all popular CAD formats, Glovius provides easy and cost effective access to design data.

Geometric Stackup provides a simple solution to perform tolerance stack-up analysis on complex assemblies with unprecedented ease, speed and accuracy – reducing tolerance stack-up calculation time from hours to minutes.

Action Engineering thanks HCL Technologies for their Signature Sponsorship of 3D CIC 2018 taking place in Golden, Colorado on October 15-18, 2018. Click here to find out more about the event and to register.

3D Collaboration & Interoperability Congress

The 3D Collaboration & Interoperability Congress (3D CIC) focuses on 3D CAD collaboration and interoperability for the entire product lifecycle. The 2018 theme of Enterprise Accountability will bring together real users to share experiences and learn about the topics of Culture & Champions, Quality, and Manufacturing. 3D CIC 2018 will be held October 15-18, 2018 at the American Mountaineering Center in Golden, Colorado. Find out more and register at 3dcic.com.