SmartLine Service Integration & identifying Industry needs
Patrick Leonard
Smartline - Design & Workflow automation | Member at MEGA Micro Electricity Generation | ICSTA Ireland China Science and Technology Association | CEA - Asset Flow Systems |
Patrick Leonard
SmartLine Design& workflow Automation
A major problem with technology adoption in Engineering design
There is a massive design deficit in industry, it is endemic from supply chain through to the buyer, where inability to integrate technology into business process is driving ineffectiveness, project over run’s & bad tendering practice.
Customers do demand efficiency & innovation, every new job starts out with “ how can we excel “ but all too soon, we are all back to “ cut roll & weld “ & what’s elected by consensus, the rest is negotiated.
Main reason in our view, is, design tools are poorly understood & implemented.
It is not enough to buy off the shelf & use out-of-box ! many operations end up doing this, or it goes un-noticed, only to end up in a new cul-de-sac, with marginal gains.
The big elephant in the room !
The point illustrated
Here is a post from a prominent supplier of framing & fixing solutions, the solution is lean, adaptable & configurable, requires no welding & no visits to disparate galvanising operations, shot blasting, pickling etc
See below Linkedin screen capture :
Above is the modular framing system as advertised, which makes a very compelling case, to save on the infamous “ cut roll & weld “ operations.
Steel for those that are not familiar, comes in standard size rolled sections, these are hot rolled ( back scale ), cold rolled, a more polished steel look.
The sections normally come in random 12 meter lengths from steel mills.
They are marked, cut, drilled, welded, cleaned up, galvanised & assembled to make a whole variety of items as required by construction projects.
Being able to ‘ cut out ‘ all of this cut-roll-weld plus associated methods would make sense, it would also save money.
It seems that comparing
Old way : mark, cut, drill, weld, clean up, galvanise assemble & bolt
New way : mark, cut, assemble & screw
Would be a fore gone conclusion, especially within the increasingly competitive market we are in.
Reasons as to why this is the case
Purchasing rarely looks beyond the meter/meter price compare ,,,
Although saving on labour ! invalidates the meter / meter comparison.
There is also the design process, workshop process & customer, more on the customer aspect again, we are primarily interested in the design & adoption process.
Part of the tech adoption barrier to new system at design & workshop level is :
- Accounts / Quantity see it as expensive, meter per meter compared with steel sections.
- For designers, these items are not in a menu for selection.
- Workshop prefer to use Victorian rolled sections
- Suppliers & service providers tied in to rolled sections & associated operations
Why meter per meter is invalid comparison when comparing new frame system to rolled Victorian sections.
- Handling, lighter, square & pre prepped
- Easier to cut, no welding, no shot blasting, no galvanising with associated transport to / from, no drilling & predictable strength.
Contributing factors
One apparent root cause of the problem, is CAD system cannot assimilate the new way into out-of-box function, & why mention out-of-box function specifically ? because it is a big problem.
In general
Design perspective :
- Inability of small to medium sized design teams to integrate new tech <1000
- Budget overruns
- Excessive contract negotiation & litigation
Fabrication perspective :
- Traditional steel supply is victorian sections
- Traditional fabrication is as above
- Traditional customer is not discerning, unable to rationalise like for like.
Do we have evidence of a problem ?
See below, a close up of a frame, from a 3D model as posted by another entity, who has adopted 3D, perhaps recently ?
We can see the brown frame is clearly modeled as C-Channel. [ we cannot give the clearer picture as it may incur trouble ]
Why is the new lean & fabrication light system not being used? It is 50% weight for weight & does not require galvanising, cutting, welding or drilling !
( before we say clean room or any such ,,, this is C-Channel , so it’s utilities / Black/ Grey area )
We can also see what appears to be yellow flange plating as attached to a brown C-channel.
The company in question posted this model as a way marker of success in efficient practice brought about by adoption of 3D.
This is partly true, however, it also shows us the Elephant in the room !
Or, why are most budgets are bust !
Why is fabrication & construction so labor intensive ?
Why is design not flexible ?
Why are design systems limited ?
What takes design so long ?
What are we paying for here ?
Evidence of a huge challenge
Failure to adopt : failure modes :
Design system :
The new frame system components & jointing are not available to designers, since most designers are reliant on out-of-box functions, they will only use what is available on the menu.
Bespoke systems such as Sikla must be separately integrated into design systems. This is a very big job, requiring skill sets & activities that are well outside the LOB.
To be fair, most suppliers do produce 3D content, however, integration of this has it’s own challenges.
For designers, moving off menu & generating bespoke 3D is exponentially time consuming. For those tasked with delivery, such activity is a sackable offence.
The Sikla system benefits
Why are so many designers so reliant on out-of-box functions?
One answer is, configuration of design systems is very time consuming & too susceptible to frequent system updates, that can render useless much hard work overnight !
While some configuration is possible, such activity is normally funded
1. Project early stage
2. With client buy in
In house teams are tuned to Line Of Business, moving outside of that line leads to inability to deliver, CAD offers so much in line of configuration options,
It is easy & tempting to confuse service integration with configuration & maintenance.
Service integration
Service integration is another LOB, in addition, the culture of using service integration is simply not there & not fund able, only by large organisations.
Suppliers are more and more being tasked with producing content for designers, but mismatches in data, structure & level of detail are causing havoc.
Can bigger organisations not sort this out ?
They can, but, they have upwards of 30,000 employed, with at least 1,000 dedicated to system development as opposed to maintenance, let that sink in, maintenance is another department, such organisations reach the 40-60% time saving sweet spot that CAD promises but won’t deliver unless the effort goes in !
Can IT departments not do this ?
IT has evolved mainly into an onboard-install package-maintain network function, many of their skills are redundant, they are LOB support, not system development, & even if the do development, it is no where near integrated as a product is.
Can vendors not supply the plug ins ?
One vendor that used to do this & with some success, has now opted to buy into a select top shelf CAD Design company, this company has shown capability in this regard, the stake was 15 million dollars.
They still offer vanilla 3D content, but if you want the design work, you buy that from them.
The true cost of integration
We can see the evolution of CAD critical mass in effectiveness & efficiency, 1,000 people @ 50k pa is 50 million in labour ,,, cost of CAD package for 1000 odd seats is 5 million, cost of buy in to a successful operation is 15 million.
This puts the true cost of CAD 3D delivering productivity gains at between 15 & 50 million, if you are not in this arena, you are not effective & efficient & no entity on our Island is there, bar One !, a major supplier.
Is your organisation in or out ?
If your operation is using CAD-out-of-box, with a few inevitable configurations & guileful knick knacks, you are nowhere near the proven critical mass, that is the 15 to 50 million to properly step up.
& even then, the larger company must assign resources to & maintain the developed system.
In addition you cannot possibly find the skill set, or resources !
Look at your line of business & the lines of business within the line of business !
do you have
- coders
- analysts
- product development
- subject matter expert
- hardware engineers
It took one major Irish company over 15 years to start getting results from 3D, we don’t need to see inside when it is clear to us from service delivery & movement of key personnel such is the case.
IRELAND : Design capability
1 No. vendor with integrated design capabilities
1 No. consultant with potential 3D capability
0 No. contractors with anything
Not a pretty picture.
On the other hand
1 No. Design & Workflow Automation / Service Integrator
A killer stroke, check out the sales survey result here,
Over 50% are looking for Design & Software tools from the vendor !
= don't have them & can't develop them !
We can write a book on this ! so to cut the story short, our SmartLine offering. can solve many of the problems for smaller operations ( < 20000) which are faced with major challenges in, adoption & getting value from technology.
So what is SmartLine
SmartLine was developed as an easily accessible portal / user page, featuring Automated Design & Workflow, focused on pipe supports.
SmartLine offers
- Auto generation of LOD400/ 500 spec driven 3D content plus placement in model
- Track n trace for ordering & fabrication
- Auto generate design, cutting lists, order lists, issue lists
- Full real time visibility across all stake holders on cost, progress & location of item / item group
- Area categorisation & manage sub frames
- Issue tracking & smart device integration
The SmartLine function right now is worth 15-50 million, in terms of it’s integrated delivery & time saving capabilities, sells for allot less as it uses a distributed model, Which can be adopted with minimum disruption.
SmartLine can give your operation the step up to 50-60% gains, without the massive investment.
Talk to us, we can do this.