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ScienceDirect Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 576 – 581
The 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering
Highly Iterative Product Development Within The Tool And Die Making Industry Günther Schuha, Michael Salmena, Thomas Kuhlmanna, Jan Wiesea,* *Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, Steinbachstr. 19, 52074 Aachen, Germany * Jan Wiese. Tel.: +49-(0)241-80-28203; fax:+49-(0)241-80-22293. E-mail address:
[email protected]
Abstract The tool and die making industry, characterized by single and small series production, sees itself faced with new challenges due to decreasing product life cycles and increasing product derivatization. Therefore tool and die making companies need to shorten their development times and raise their efficiency. Currently tool makers are often still little integrated into customers’ processes, which complicates the decrease of development times significantly. To improve the integration, high value-added processes and services need to be offered to their customers to participate in the whole customers’ product development processes. Due to the fact that customers still demand constantly high tool’s quality, new procedures and technologies are needed in order to achieve an early product maturity. The solution presented in this paper concerns the potentials that can be addressed by using highly iterative product development processes within the tool and die making industry. It includes high frequency optimization, paired with generative manufacturing technologies to ensure a resource-efficient and fast product development process. The usage of modern information and communications technologies (ICT) like tablet-based 3D-visualization will be shown to describe how these products and services in the Internet of Things (IoT) era support decreasing developing times. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Conference on Life Cycle Engineering. Peer-review under responsibility of the cscientific of the 24th CIRP under responsibility of the scientifi committeecommittee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering Peer-review
Keywords: Tool and Die making Industry; Highly Iterative Product Development; Customer Integration; upstream service offers
1. Introduction The tool and die making industry is one of the key industries in the manufacturing sector due to its role in the value chain between product development and series production of manufacturing goods [1, 2]. As the enabler of product development, it is the foundation for every kind of manufacturing sector, especially the high-performance manufacturing sector in Western Europe [2]. On the basis of these characteristics the tool and die making industry majorly influences the product’s quality and costs and thereby its success [1, 3, 4]. This position within the value chain leads to a strong impact of customer’s requirements on the tool development. For some time past a significant trend towards increasing product individualization but shortening life cycles can be recognized. Due to that the number of product derivates increases
continuously while the amount of sales per derivate decreases simultaneously [5]. As a consequence companies of the tool making industry are demanded to provide their products to their customers much faster than today. Furthermore the competition increases constantly as a result of the internationalization of tool procurement. Because of that especially companies from highwage countries need to expand their range of services and thereby attract new customers and revenue opportunities [6]. Therefore it is advantageous to expand the product range horizontally to the customers’ value creation process and thus achieve a deeper integration into the customer’s processes [7, 8]. This integration can be achieved by agile processes in connection with innovative production processes as well as information and communication technologies (ICT). Thereby tool making companies can support their customers to reduce their time to market significantly.
2212-8271 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering doi:10.1016/j.procir.2016.11.259
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This article considers the potentials and challenges, which are given by accompanying highly iterative product development processes, like decreased development times and higher amount of turnover on the one side and necessary new abilities on the other side. Firstly the structure of highly iterative product development processes will be explained. After that this paper will especially explain the work at the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) at RWTH Aachen University of creating an approach how the tool and die industry can accompany highly iterative product development processes. The paper consists of 3 chapters which will illustrate the present situation in the tool and die industry and compare this with the potential of highly iterative product development processes. Afterwards it will be shown how modern ICTs can support companies in realizing shorter development times. Some short concluding remarks will finalize the paper. In the following, the word “tool” is used to describe tools as well as dies. Therefore companies of the industry are described by the expression “tool making company” and the industry itself by the expression “tool making industry”. 2. The Tool Making Industry
2.1. Overview The international tool making sector is characterized by a high inhomogeneity in quality of service provision. Tool making companies from countries like Germany or Japan offer high-quality tools and services. Tool making companies from emerging markets such as Mexico or South Africa have the potential to undergo the current development of the Chinese market and offer high-quality tools in addition to not that complex ones, in future too. Consequently they would become a serious competitor in the international tool procurement market [9]. What they all have in common is the characterization through small and medium sized enterprises [10]. In Germany for example about 80% of approx. 54,000 employees are employed in companies with less than 20 workers [11]. The current economic development of the tool making market is deemed positive in principle. For example in Germany the tool production increased from about € 3,567 M in 2010 to € 4,319 M in 2013 [10]. The product range includes diecasting-, sheet- and massive forming- as well as injection molding tools and varies depending on the country. In Portugal, for example, 91.5% of the production is attributed to injection molding tools, whereas Germany shows a balanced output of sheet- and massive forming tools (45.3%) and injection molding tools (49.6%) [10]. Especially in high-wage countries the importance of additional up- and downstream services, so called Product-Service-Systems, which they provide in addition to their core product, increases constantly due to new competitors from low-wage countries [12].
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2.2. Present product development process Currently tool making companies go through a rigid and chronological process during their product development as visualized in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Present position of the tool maker's order fulfilment process within the customer's value chain [13]
The actual tool maker’s order fulfilment process normally starts only after the customer’s product development has been finished. At this time the product is completely developed and all product specifications are determined so that tool makers cannot bring in their competences. The tool maker’s order fulfilment process includes the five steps of design, work preparation, mechanical manufacturing, assembly as well as try-out, which are located between the customer’s product development and parts production. Because of those conditions, the customer often receives a first realistic impression of its product not until the tool is finished. At that time the tool cannot be adjusted without high financial expense and expenditure of time anymore. This kind of rigid order fulfilment process is heavily limited in its potential to decrease customer’s product development times in the long term. 2.3. Challenges and potentials Currently the tool making sector is subjected to numerous trends which require an adjustment of business structure. On the one hand, the characteristics of customer’s tool requirements change continuously. As a result, all tool making markets, regardless of their tool quality, need to find answers to the trends of increasing product individualization as well as derivatization and, as a consequence, the decreasing quantity per batch. Simultaneously the product life cycle decreases [5]. The life cycle of the VW Golf I, produced since 1974, was 10 years. 34 years later the life cycle of VW Golf VI has already been halved to 5 years [14]. This means, that the need of tools increases in total, but due to the fact that tool budgets remain stable the price pressure on tool making companies increases constantly [15]. The situation is aggravated by higher requirements on the tool’s quality, new available production processes as well as new raw materials customers use for their products [16]. A factor, which is especially relevant for tool makers from high-wage countries is the steady pressure to innovate, in order to remain profitable in competition with competitors from low-wage countries [17, 18]. Currently tool makers are explicitly limited in their range of services, which makes it difficult to find answers to these challenges. Furthermore they act in slow processes, which
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leads to rigid use of resources as well as inflexible organizational structures. To ensure long-term competitiveness regarding these challenges, new solutions are needed to provide services faster to the customer, while retaining full quality. A closer look at the traditional product development process shows, that especially the tool manufacturing is suitable for decreasing time-to-market. This concretely means an earlier and deeper integration into customer’s processes as well as a more efficient and thus shorter tool development process. Accompanying highly iterative product development processes enables tool making companies to address both aspects. Even when this topic seems to be relevant just for industrialized countries, it can be a way for market players from emerging markets to open-up new potential customers and markets. 3. Highly Iterative Product Development Processes The computer science industry successfully uses the so called Scrum-method. Key elements of this method are minimal bureaucratic burden and an iterative project approach so that it is possible to quickly create software prototypes and get early feedback whether the solution approach is useful [19]. Thus the factors quality, time and costs are addressed successfully und simultaneously [20]. Producing companies try to reach such efficiency results for their own business by adopting that method in a customized way called Agile Product Development [21]. Key element is the fast and flexible reaction to market changes and new customer requirements. For that, a high amount of optimization loops is conducted high-frequently during the product development process with the objective to reach product maturity much earlier [22, 23]. The tool making industry has the chance to become a central enabler of these processes and achieve significant competitive advantages by holistically accompanying the customer’s product development process. By acting agile and iterative the tool making companies are able to decrease the customer’s time-to-market. But due to the radical change of established structures the tool making companies also see themselves faced with new challenges which require a rethinking in many areas. 3.1. Potentials and Challenges of highly iterative product development processes A glance at the German tool making sector shows that the lead time is a significant benchmark of successful companies. For example the 10 most successful tool making companies at the competition „Excellence in Production“ have a 32% lower lead time for tools than the average of all participating companies [24]. By accompanying the customer’s product development process more intensively the tool development time can be decreased and, as a consequence, the customer product’s time-to-market as well. This effect can be explained by the additional information acquisition because of the iterative work steps and by the availability of tool maker’s
know-how during early phases of customer’s product development. Hence tool making companies can address an important aspect of successful companies, by conducting highly iterative product development processes. In addition to shortening development time, early integration into customer’s processes also results into other advantages. It enables tool making companies to offer upstream services to the customers, which can, as part of complete Product-Service-Systems, increase customer value significantly and generate additional revenue. Overall accompanying customer’s product development processes by acting agile and iterative increases customer’s loyalty, whereby acquisition of additional up- and downstream services and future tool orders become more probable [25]. Because the application of these new processes also generates new challenges, these need to be addressed to ensure a successful realization of the potentials of highly iterative product development processes. As a result of the completely new designed work steps, it is important to intensively include all participating employees to the change process to avoid nonrational rejection of changings and internalize new procedures. According to Schuh the intensity and autonomy of Scrumteams is relevant for the success of development work, which is why a permanent or at least periodically physical localization of the teams is recommended [26]. Moreover the interaction within the Scrum-teams needs to be as flexible as possible as not stick in classical, rigid processes. Finally, the high-frequency, quick sprints require new production processes and technologies to meet the demands of fast creation of prototypes and knowledge return [26]. 3.2. Structure and Design Principles The WZL has intensively dealt with the shown potentials and challenges and, based on this work, developed a model for designing highly iterative product development processes for the producing industry. For this purpose four phases have been identified, which are part of a highly iterative product development process. Figure 2 shows the current product maturity over the time for the traditional as well as the highly iterative process. In addition, the four phases Frontloading, Prototypes, Primotypes and Reverse Engineering are visualized. In Phase 0, the Frontloading, the general basic specifications of the later product are determined. For that the general requirements are collected and a basic specification sheet, the
Figure 2 Product maturity using highly iterative and classical product development
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product backlog, is created. In Phase 1 first prototypes are produced already for example by using additive manufacturing processes. Thereby a decoupling of different levels such as function, design or impression is needed to make a clear knowledge creation possible. During the following Primotype Phase a first functional release is conducted. For that a small series of up to 100 Primotypes is produced and evaluated based on market requirements. In Phase 3, the Reverse Engineering, the previously collected data is brought together to a marketable product and production plants are designed. The work during the several phases, especially the Protoand Primotype Phase, is characterized by a high number of short sprints. These sprints can be described on a principle, process and method level [27, 28]. The principle level uses five requirements to describe the basic idea of highly iterative product development. The central focus is the increase of customer value, which is evaluated by „look & feel“ of rapid prototypes and continuous customer involvement along the complete product development. Furthermore the permanent need to adapt and the fact that the importance of individuals and interactions override processes are in the foreground. On the process level the schedule of the several development steps is described. The development work consists of individual 520 daily sprints, which are again characterized by daily Scrum work. At the end of every sprint the results are analysed and the product backlog, the long-term planning, is put in more concrete terms. The method level finally describes the way how work packages are determined. Starting point for that is the rudimentary specification sheet. From that, the sprint planning is derived, which is the base for the sprint specific sprint backlog. So, a task board can be created, which visualizes the specific task within the Scrum-teams for every sprint. In close cooperation with the StreetScooter GmbH, the WZL has proven the applicability of highly iterative product development processes successfully [29]. Already 18 month after company foundation the new battery electric vehicle was presented. Thereby the usual development time in automotive industry was halved and the costs were decreased by about 90%. Central enabler for that were a highly iterative product development process on the one hand and a successful network of suppliers and partners on the other hand. 3.3. How the Tool Making Industry can use highly iterative product development processes Tool making companies now need to develop concrete products and services to address the four phases – frontloading, prototypes, primotypes and reverse engineering – of highly iterative product development processes. With a correct design, which takes into account the tool maker’s abilities, this new services and products lead to a much better differentiation from the competitors and an improved economic situation. Figure 3 shows these concrete applications for each phase. Phase 0 of a highly iterative product development, the frontloading, is characterized by an intensive engineering support of tool maker’s customers. This offers huge
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opportunities of selling additional services to customers, like component design/optimization or support in feasibility analyses and derivation of demands for Prototype Phase, which come along with higher customer loyalty. Tool maker’s participation in early phases of customer’s product development leads to additional benefit due to timely discovery and avoidance of difficulties in following tool development and consequently decreasing development time as well as time-tomarket of customer’s product.
Figure 3 Implications for the tool making industry
The next step is the production of first patterns. This means prototypes with different quality levels and made of different raw materials, regarding to customer’s requirements. Central enabler of this phase are additive manufacturing processes which are necessary to meet the requirements regarding to time and costs. This demands the tool making companies to control new production technologies, but also allows them to overtake technology leadership and as a result increase customer loyalty. Phase 2, the production of primotypes, offers new opportunities to the tool making companies. By using raw materials like aluminium simple tools can be produced faster and more cost efficient than serial tools. In some specific usecases additive manufacturing processes are possible, too. On the one hand these simple tools can be used to produce small series without high quality requirements and thus heavily decreasing tool’s costs. On the other side these tools are part of the iterative development process and allow transferring the lessons learned to the series production tool. The created primotypes by using the simple tool also give an impression of handling, ergonomics and haptic of customer’s product. The last phase is designing appropriate tools. Due to the participation in the customer’s product development and the knowledge production based on proto- and primotypes, the production process of the final serial tool can be significantly decreased and the tool is resolute oriented towards customer’s requirements. Overall, it has been outlined that there are many different possibilities along the several phases of a highly iterative product development to decrease the time-to-market significantly and simultaneously open up new revenue opportunities. Based on that, the economic success as well as the competitiveness and innovative capability can be ensured on long terms. Moreover, the deeper integration into customer processes leads to a versatile and interdisciplinary working environment, which makes the tool making attractive to
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potential employees and helps fighting against the lack of specialists [26]. But it is obvious that accompanying highly iterative product development processes in connection with deeper integration into customer’s processes also leads to new challenges, which requires, in addition to the already shown ones in chapter 3.1, new capabilities and abilities. To facilitate implementation the WZL has identified four central new areas of talents the tool making industry needs to adopt to successfully act in this field of action [26]. These four talents are mechatronics, software engineering, automation and product design. This is necessary to ensure a competent integration into customer’s processes and an efficient use of new production processes. However, these abilities are not part of the current professional education, so that it becomes crucial to develop new approaches for trainings to ensure a successful addressing of the presented potentials. 4. Enablers of highly iterative product development processes For a successful accompanying of shorter development cycles based on the presented methodology the tool making rely on new technological enablers. On the one hand the short, iterative development sprints require the ability to manufacture prototypes time- and cost-efficient. For this, new production processes are needed. On the other hand, modern information and communication technologies (ICT) offer new possibilities to decrease development times through faster collection of data and its analysis to avoid issues in product- and tool development. 4.1. Additive Manufacturing The additive manufacturing, also known as 3D-printing, includes all processes, which realize a layer-by-layer production of parts [30]. By using different raw materials and processes customized solutions for many applications are possible. According to Klocke 25% of a product’s development time is spent with producing prototypes [16]. Additive manufacturing can help to significantly decrease this amount. At the moment this technology has a low market penetration and many companies have not dealt with it yet. As a consequence it allows tool making companies to become technology leader in this area and based on that offer additional services to their customers and differentiate from their competitors. The second major advantage of additive manufacturing is the imminent cost-savings. The lower the batch size is, the higher the savings are. That makes additive manufacturing perfectly suitable for producing prototypes which leads to up to 70% lower producing costs [16]. All in all, additive manufacturing enables tool makers to offer their customers a time- and cost-efficient way to test early prototypes before the tool is finished and therefore strengthen their own competitive position.
4.2. Modern Information and Communication Technologies Modern information and communication technologies and their application in industry 4.0 approaches are the second major enabler of a successful accompanied highly iterative product development. As a result of the short, high-frequency iteration steps a large data volume comes up. To meet the challenge of collecting this data efficiently and completely utilizing it companies rely on modern ICTs. These conditions under which the sprint reviews are proceeded, are comparable to try-out processes in the tool making industry. Companies of the tool making sector can thus bring in their know-how in this area and refer to already used industry 4.0 applications. One example for that is the IDA-App (Information Digitalization Application) developed by WZL. It enables the comprehensive record of occurring mistakes by using a central data base and offers an automatic analysis of this data. Another example is an innovative compression tool, which easily transfers even very extensive data records to a mobile device. Therefore it allows for the mobile visualization of complex 3D data on a tablet [31]. This tablet-based 3Dvisualization can be used for easy visual comparison between actual and target state of a tool. It can detect errors much faster and more efficiently, for example, in prototypes during very early phases of the iterative product development process. These applications of ICTs are not only limited to the product development process, but can also be used for other approaches, for example during manufacturing or assembly, to further reduce time-to-market. It is important to emphasize that all significant technological obstacles for a successful application of ICTs in companies are already eliminated today. The hardware has reached market maturity and financial burden are constantly decreasing. Often the only obstacles are emotional resistant, so that it is important to sensitize companies for the potentials and present them concrete recommendations for action. 5. Concluding Remarks In this paper accompanying highly iterative product development processes and its enabler have been shown as one possible solution for changing and increasing requirements tool maker need to meet. The core content of these processes decreases product development time by separating the traditional development process into several work packages which are processed by short sprints and characterized by a high amount of created prototypes. The tool making industry can accompany this process by offering a high amount of additional services along the customer’s development process. Therefore four phases have been shown which describes the development steps within highly iterative processes in the producing industry. Based on that concrete design principles for tool makers have been developed complemented with possible applications. In addition several possibilities have been presented which enable tool makers to offer new services and achieve a higher integration into upstream customer’s processes and thus higher amount of turnover. In conclusion,
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this paper describes a new approach for a highly iterative product development within the tool making industry. Thereby the major challenges for tool making companies can be solved by applying the four phases, which are part of a highly iterative product development process in combination with new production processes as well as modern information and communication technologies (ICT). The paper was finalized by necessary talents and technologies for a successful implementation of highly iterative product development processes. Acknowledgements This project (Life cycle oriented customer networking in the tool and die making industry) is funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – German Research Foundation. References [1] Cleveland, M.: A Competitive Assessment of the Die and Mould Building Sector, Grand Rapids, 2002 [2] Schuh, G.; Pitsch, M.: Systematic Management of Knowledge as an Integral Part of the Infrastructure of Tool and Die Making Companies, in Procerdings of PICMET '14: Infrastructure and Service Integration, Kanazawa: Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 2014 [3] Holmes, J.; Rutherford, T; Fitzgibbon, S.: Innovation in the Automotive Tool, Die and Mould Industry, in Network Structure of an Industrial Cluster, Toronto: Queens University, 2005 [4] Menezes, J.: European Mould Making: Towards a New Competitive Positioning, in “Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium Tool and Die Making for the Future”, Aachen, 2004 [5] Schuh, G.; Pitsch, M.; Kuhlmann, T., Schippers, M.: Internationaler Werkzeugbau. Beschaffung von Werkzeugen , Aachen, 2015 [6] Schuh, G.; Pitsch, M.; Komorek, N.; Hensen, T.: University and Industry Collaboration in the Tool Making Industry, in Conference Proceedings of the International Conference on Teaching and Education INTED 2014, 2014 [7] German Machine Tool Builders‘ Association (Verein Deutscher Werkzeugmaschinenfabriken e.V.): Welt-Werkzeugmaschinen-Statistik 2012, Frankfurt am Main, 2013 [8] German Machine Tool Builders‘ Association (Verein Deutscher Werkzeugmaschinenfabriken e.V.): Marktbericht 2014. Die deutsche Werkzeugmaschinenindustrie und ihre Stellung auf dem Weltmarkt, Frankfurt am Main, 2015 [9] Schuh, G.; Pitsch, M.; Kuhlmann, T., Schippers, M.: Internationaler Werkzeugbau. Beschaffung von Werkzeugen , Aachen, 2015 [10] Boos, W.; Pitsch, M.; Kuhlmann, T.; Schippers, M.; Stark, M.: World of Tooling 205, Aachen, 2015
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