Thanks to the Internet, you can now have more input into your company’s automation systems without attending a lengthy meeting. With the advent and spread of collaborative manufacturing tools, you can share design, development and maintenance of an automation system without calling a meeting or having to travel to another town. Collaborative tools boost efficiencies on existing processes, and they also let companies spiff up automation in ways that are simply not possible using conventional communication. The result is greater efficiency in all stages of the manufacturing process, and higher quality systems.

One system designer finds that using collaboration can help eliminate manufacturing bugs before they occur. “We used to get involved in a project and immediately get behind the eight ball. Then we had to work our way out,” says G. Duane Grob, vice president and engineering manager at Total Systems Design Inc., an automation integration firm in West Chester, Pa. “Now, we discuss all aspects of what the project needs up front.”

Total Systems Design uses collaboration tools from Paris-based Schneider Electric to test its manufacturing systems before it begins to build them. “We collaborate on the design and detect pitfalls,” says Grob. “It solves problems before they happen rather than after.” The collaborative process helps Total Systems Design in doing the same old tasks faster, but more importantly, the collaboration allows the company to develop new areas of planning. “At this point we’re being exposed to parts of the process that previously, we didn’t usually get into,” says Grob.

Though collaboration is already providing benefits as an internal tool, Grob notes that he expects the benefits to increase once he begins to extend it outside the company’s walls. “It’s not a true tool yet,” says Grob. “It gives us a tool internally, but we’re not yet bringing people in from the outside.”

According to ARC Advisory Group Inc., in Dedham, Mass., collaboration is gaining traction among manufacturers. “Collaboration is hugely on the increase. It’s happening more and more,” says ARC’s Greg Gorbach, director of collaborative manufacturing. As for defining collaboration, Gorbach takes a wide view. “It’s any way you work with customers electronically, and it’s internally knitting together different business processes.”

From design to supply chain

Collaboration involves a range of areas important to manufacturers, including product design and the configuration of the automation setup for discrete or process manufacturing. Much of this collaboration involves internal staff, but manufacturers are also bringing in suppliers and customers to work together on supply chain issues such as demand planning, inventory levels and order management.

Manufacturers can use the same system for both plant and supply chain collaboration. Rockwell Automation, in Milwaukee, works with manufacturers on numerous areas of

collaboration. “We have two elements of collaboration,” says Ralph Kappelhoff, business manager of software development and solutions marketing at Rockwell. “One focuses on collaboration in laying out an automation

scenario. The second is collaboration in the supply chain, which includes sharing information on plant reliability and performance for promise schedules and automated sharing of product data and recipes.”

When it comes to collaborating on manufacturing design, there are a variety of aspects to Rockwell’s tools. “We have collaboration tools that share information on control and design systems, computer-aided design (CAD) drawings and specifications for the system and controls,” says Tim Reckinger, director of design business for Rockwell.

Schneider Electric has recently released a collaborative tool that allows engineers to share a centralized design. “The new Unity Studio is a collaborative software environment for industrial automation and all disciplines needed to design a process or a plant,” says Robb Dussualt, Unity project manager. “Our customers also use collaboration to install and maintain their plant automation.”

Schneider’s Unity Studio facilitates interlocking portions of an automation system. “With large plants or processes, there is complex interlocking from one machine to another,” says Dussualt. “With Unity Studio, you can develop interlocking systems between different pieces.”

Dussualt notes that, in the past, making alterations in the interlocks between machines has been a manual burden that usually involved a number of professionals. In the collaborative environment, the interlocking is configured automatically and shared with all who need to see any alterations. “Now, a single person can define up to ten interlocking variables, and everyone is updated simultaneously.”

In explaining Unity, Dussualt describes a system that was initially set up for use within an organization, pulling together various personnel from different disciplines and allowing them to share information in ways that were not possible in the past. But ...