A global technology company serving the utility, industry, transportation, and infrastructure industries wanted to establish a digital thread to enhance its manufacturing capabilities and increase automation.
The company faced hurdles due to delays in receiving validation requirements from engineering teams of clients for proposed configurations. In addition, lack of automation resulted in up to 20% errors in manufacturing orders.
Infosys integrated sales, engineering and manufacturing with smart automation, and reduced order to delivery times of products from 12 weeks to less than eight days.
Key Challenges
- Responsiveness: Lack of a system to validate client’s requirements despite a sales team defining the scope led to delays of four to six weeks
- Budgeting: Sales and design teams developed and validated a design, shared it with the client, and created a bill of materials (BOM), which took five weeks
- Human intervention: The team entered machine numerical control (NC) codes into the system, which led to delays in manufacturing
- Production planning: A further four days were required for production planning based on demand, shop floor execution, quality checks and delivery
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The Solution
Digital thread accelerates configure-to-order time from 12 weeks to eight days
Infosys established a digital thread to integrate manufacturing across the motor unit of the company. The objective: improve configure-to-order lead time from 12 weeks to eight days, and reduce manufacturing errors due to human intervention.
Our team evaluated the existing system, identified components to be automated, and developed a systems architecture to link multiple systems and streamline data.
Infosys collaborated with technology partners to integrate a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution, and a configuration platform to align the product from engineering and sales to manufacturing and service, with the downstream SAP ERP system. Our team also integrated an industrial IoT solutions platform with upstream SAP and downstream CNC machines.
Our digital solution enabled the company to reduce overall motor order processing time by automating the order process, which now eliminates design validation by the engineering team.
The new solution simplifies the customer experience, allowing product customization and configuration based on the field application. It also translates client inputs for motor features and functions in the configurator platform to engineering specifications in the CAD and PLM systems.
The company now generates machine NC codes automatically, which are directly entered into the machining systems for manufacturing. Our solution drives production planning based on demand, shop floor execution, quality check and delivery.
Integrated manufacturing ecosystem simplifies ordering process
- Connects the front-end user to manufacturing automation (via PLM and ERP integration) with limited human intervention
- Integrated digital manufacturing solution template can be replicated across factories globally
- Showcases next-generation industrial automation internally and externally
Benefits
Expedited delivery
Reduced delivery time from 12 weeks to eight days
Automation
Introduced 40%+ automation in the process
Fewer errors
Reduced manufacturing errors
Enhanced collaboration
Enabled systematic collaboration between the R&D and sales teams
Configure-to-order improvements
Improved the configure-to-order (CTO) system from 50% to 95%
