Archive — September 2019 interviews with Technavio, Materials Solutions and Sintratec. Roles, projects and operating figures refer to that period.
Product customisation and the search for more flexible production encourage manufacturers to examine their methods. Additive manufacturing can contribute where its technical and economic value is demonstrated for the application.
Integrating AM may require changes to design, preparation, manufacture and inspection. Procurement, materials management, heat treatment and finishing are also part of the chain to organise.
This feature examines the role of digital tools and data in industrialising additive manufacturing, and the obstacles to their integration.
Jaya Krushna Panda, Industry Manager at Technavio, Phil Hatherley, General Manager, Materials Solutions – a Siemens Business and Dominik Solenicki, CEO of SINTRATEC have shared their respective experience in this dossier.
Technavio is a global technology research and advisory company. The company’s research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide actionable insights, thereby helping businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.
As its name implies, Materials Solutions – a Siemens Business, is a Siemens company. It specializes in the manufacturing of high-performance metal parts. The company is acknowledged as a reliable partner of various demanding industries (automotive, aerospace, medical, etc.).
Sintratec is a Switzerland-based manufacturer of 3D printing systems that integrate SLS technology. The Swiss manufacturer has successfully positioned itself in many European markets and supports its customers in both production and post-processing stages.
Prototyping, parts production, testing and materials selection…additive manufacturing is now part of the whole product development process. Even though, a lot of improvements still needs to be made, manufacturers agree with the fact that this technology is growing at fast pace.
Therefore, monitoring this evolution is essential, especially for industrials that can benefit from significant advantages in terms of productivity, quality and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, being at the forefront of innovation also requires to master new skills at the engineering level.
Engineers should therefore stay informed, on the other hand, should be given the required tools and methodologies to go through this digital transformation. In this vein, several questions need to be answered:
How much does digitalization affect the AM process ?
Technavio’s Industry Manager, Jaya Krushna Panda explains: “Digitalization affects the AM process starting from the raw material procurement to production management, distribution, and final customer. Digitalization of production for the automotive and aerospace industries reduces the operational complexity while embedding the complexity in the digital components of the system. For instance, the production planning and control for AM-enabled manufacturing may be distinctly different from that in the case of conventional production methods. Production routing, loading, and scheduling can become simplified as steps of production are combined through AM utilization.”
Phil Hatherley, General Manager, Materials Solutions – a Siemens Business, explains the impact of digitalization in AM at the software level: “the revolution in industrial production that is now underway thanks to advances in additive manufacturing would itself not have been possible without the comprehensive digital transformation of production processes, from design and engineering software, and simulation tools for printing all the way to control and monitoring of printers. Digitalization is critical for the AM process to create a component – without a digital 3D model of the component, AM cannot do anything. For the end products that require the use of AM in the manufacturing of some parts, digitalization can have a significant impact. For larger products such as gas turbines, the creation of a digital twin enables significant analysis and improvements to be considered prior to production.
In addition, digitalization opens new business opportunities. Reverse Engineering can only be executed creating a digital twin out of an existing part which needs to be replaced but the original supplier may not be able to deliver the requested part as a spare part and drawings can no longer be found.”
A digitised geometric representation and a digital twin are not necessarily equivalent. Depending on its use, a twin links the model to data or behaviours that support system analysis. Reconstructing a part also requires verification of its definition, material and expected performance.
What challenges companies should overcome to enable digital transformation?
In addition to product innovation, digital transformation is also important because it enables companies to remain competitive and to maintain/accelerate profitability. In that sense, additive manufacturing brings another level of complexity and involves the integration of additional features that might enable to increase parts performance.
Repeatability depends on control of many variables: machine condition and settings, material, preparation, environment and inspection. Two machines of the same model need not deliver identical results. Data quality matters but does not alone explain or resolve every difference.
Topological optimization, development of structures or free-form reconstruction thus play a key role in the use of this technology. As a matter of fact, they enable the use of few materials, gains over products lifecycles, and an added value created by the generation of new shapes.
Moreover, the redesign of parts often raises issues of qualification and standardization of parts, especially in industrial sectors subject to very strict regulatory frameworks (automotive, aeronautics, etc…).
In this feature, Materials Solutions describes its experience moving from research to manufacture of energy components. The software example discussed is Siemens NX, alongside preparation, simulation and inspection tools.
The objective described is to connect the successive stages through consistent digital data. The functions available depend on the software modules and production environment.
“At Siemens we are employing a fully joined up digital approach to our manufacturing process. Within NX, we are now able to design the component with AM in mind. Utilizing specific modules NX can analyze the component’s geometry to understand where support is required and automatically generate it for the build.
Through NX we can even simulate the build process in order to understand where potential issues might occur before actual printing as we aim for right first-time manufacture.
Following actual additive manufacture, we track the components within our MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) similar to any other manufacturing process. We also carry out dimensional scans of the actual component and use that digital representation of the component to compare against the original customer model in order to validate its geometrical condition.”
The geometric comparison described here checks dimensions; it does not by itself demonstrate metallurgical conformity or in-service performance.
Is it an awareness issue?
Both the manufacturer and the clients should be aware of the potential of digitalization.
All experts of this dossier agree with the fact that digitalization has optimized interaction channels between manufacturers and customers: manufacturers can provide a complete approach of how and when a specific product can be used based on the choice of the customer (customization of a product). They can easily ensure the follow-up of the order (manufacturing stage) until the delivery of the product (data transmission). This is true regardless of the distribution channel and the players involved (suppliers, partners, resellers, customers).
According to experts, if AM has a big potential, therefore digitalization will play a crucial role in its transition from a prototyping tool to a serial production technology. As a matter of fact, its impact has already been discussed not only at the level of the manufacturing process, but also from materials management to production management, distribution and end customer.
As SINTRATEC CEO Dominik Solenicki said: “One cannot really count all the advantages of digitalization. For existing business costs can be lowered, efficiency increased and so on. But it gets really interesting, when digitalization enables whole new business models that were not possible before. AM is an excellent example, where you get unprecedented speed to realize a part and lift a lot of manufacturing and design constraints.”
From Sintratec’s experience, a great number of SMEs want to combine digitalization and additive manufacturing. Talking about a customer who offers manufacturing services and quickly prints individualized robot grippers to customize his assembly lines, Dominik Solenicki points out that the main challenge such type of companies encounters in the adoption of AM is education. Both engineers and decision-makers have to be aware of the benefits of the technology for their manufacturing process and should be trained to this.
To sum up…
In a nutshell, the industrialization of additive manufacturing raises a number of issues. Even though, this technology is part of the fourth industrial revolution, one should note that the stakes are not the same for big players and SMEs.
The challenges depend on company maturity, volumes and constraints. Training, interoperability, quality and scaling can concern both SMEs and large groups.
For the CEO of Sintratec, the more companies implement digitalization, the more “the need for a manufacturing process that transforms digital into real world assets will increase.” “It is my strong believe that business transactions and business operations will virtualize to an extreme degree in the very near future and AM will step in whenever we need to have something manifested in the real world”, Dominik Solenicki concludes.
Jaya Krushna Panda, from Technavio adds that “a joint effort from the government and research centers is required to train experts and to establish accepted technical standards.”
Digital transformation requires investment in tools, integration, training and data governance. Benefits should be assessed against measurable objectives and the full deployment cost.
The interviews highlight continuity between design, manufacture and feedback. Its effectiveness depends on data quality, process control and team skills.
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