STEP update

Automotive Manufacturing & Production, March, 1997 by Mitchell Fleischer

The pilot was designed to demonstrate the benefits of the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP) to the automotive industry as a neutral standard to translate product data between CAD systems. Also, it was designed to provide feedback to CAD vendors about the ability of their STEP translation products to meet the needs of the automotive industry. Finally, the pilot was designed to demonstrate the benefits of STEP could be magnified if it was combined with changes in supply chain concurrent engineering business practices.

On the technical side the pilot has been quite successful. After a rocky start in which the systems had great difficulty even translating simple files, the translators have been improved to a point at which they average over 90% success in translation, better than many direct translation products. This success can be attributed to the direct involvement of the CAD vendors in the project. As problems were discovered during the pilot, most vendors were quick to take the information and use it to improve their implementation of the STEP standard so that the translator's performance was improved.

Despite this success, some problems look like they may take a while to overcome. For example, different levels of precision between systems means that some things can't be translated from the more precise system to the less precise one. The vendors are still working on that problem.

On the supply chain concurrent engineering business process side of the pilot, things have been underway for a shorter period of time. The pilot team is almost done with their "as-is" assessment of current practices in the seven participating supply chains. While most of what they learned in their assessments is confidential to the members of those supply chains, they did identify nine "opportunities for improvement" that could lead to substantial improvement in the operation of these supply chains. The nine opportunities were ranked by an AIAG committee as to their estimate of the potential impact they might have.

1. Improved CAD Data Quality. How the CAD model is created. Do lines meet at corners? Are solid model faces formed correctly? Do surface patches match their joining edges?

2. Inter-company Configuration Management. The way the companies manage version control across companies. Are suppliers informed promptly about which version of a model they should be using?

3. Ensuring good CAD data exchanges. Processes for making sure a CAD file exchange happened the way you expected it to and that the file was received in good working order.

4. CAD data serving as the master model. The CAD model should be the "master" version of the product, rather than a physical drawing.

5. Expanded use of CAD data. Use the CAD model for other purposes than just representing product geometry. This includes CNC programming, engineering analysis, rapid prototyping and documentation.

6. CAD software version control. With vendors upgrading CAD software so frequently, members of the supply chain need to make sure they are up to date and that members of their supply chain are using the same version as they are.

7. Changing roles of design staff. Where once a design engineer was the only technical contact between companies, increasingly designers are serving in this role. They (and others) need to be trained to fill this role and expectations (and reward systems) need to be established to support it.

8. Clear communication of design changes. Procedures need to be in place to make sure that design changes are flagged so that when a supplier (or customer) receives a new version of a product model, they can quickly understand what changes were made and why.

9. Earlier involvement of second tier. Sub-suppliers need to be involved in the design process earlier than they currently are. This may be to provide manufacturability input, or it may be to speed up their product or process planning.

The business process work is continuing. After the as-is analysis is complete, the project team expects to move on to work with the members of the supply chains to take advantage of a limited number of the opportunities just described. They will then document the benefits of doing so. I'll keep you posted on how they do.