说明
Getting the CAD model right is only half of the story. Fully understanding the production capabilities – tied to the CAD model – tells a full story for the planning phases of Digital Twins.
主要学习内容
- Understand the benefits of discrete event simulation for manufacturing and AEC customers.
- Understand how discrete event simulation and space planning are tied together.
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讲师
- Keith VadasKeith was appointed President and CEO in January 2006. Prior to that he held positions of Executive VP, Director of Vertical Business Units and VP of Sales and Marketing. He oversees the development and sales of solutions for all vertical markets. Keith is an expert in developing and marketing predictive analysis based solutions and has been driving the delivery of innovative solutions for over 30 years to more than 1000 companies. He became part of the team in 1999 when ProModel acquired Sim-Tech, a simulation and scheduling solutions provider company Keith founded 1989. Prior to starting Sim-Tech he worked as an Application Sales Engineer for 5 years marketing computer-based code dating, bar coding and data collection equipment. Keith received a B.S. in Applied Science and Technology from Rochester Institute of Technology.
- MICHAEL jolicoeurI have been an agent of change in manufacturing process for over 25 years - utilizing technology to improve manufacturing customer's processes - helping make them more competitive and more profitable. I worked at Autodesk for over 22 years and specialized in manufacturing workflows - including expertise in Inventor, AutoCAD, and in particular the Factory Design Utilities.
KEITH VADAS: Hi everybody. This is Keith Vadas from ProModel Corporation and I'm going to go through how you optimize processes and layouts using the Autodesk AutoCAD product Inventor and our brand new ProModel AutoCAD edition. So quick agenda is just to talk a little bit about the relationship between ProModel and Autodesk, a little bit of history; how using simulation and facility layout process design is beneficial; how to use it to make better decisions quicker, faster; ProModel AutoCAD edition Demo, which is a really neat video that the Autodesk team actually put together; a little bit about our 3D animator and how that works inside Inventor; and then a quick overview of the product offerings.
So the ProModel Autodesk relationship. we started it-- ProModel is a corporation back over 30 years ago and developing discrete event simulation modeling tools, and that's primarily what we still do today. We released our flagship product in 1993 and it has over 55 releases and over 23,000 users worldwide. And that's the same foundational engine that we're going to see today that's built inside AutoCAD. In 2018, we started working with the Autodesk team to develop our simulators that work tightly with the Factory Design Utilities and specifically inside AutoCAD because they saw real need out there and the customers are requesting more powerful simulation capabilities linked to the design utility's capabilities.
So in December '19, we actually signed a joint marketing agreement with Autodesk and then shortly after released our very first versions of our software. And in August 2020, we released the MVP version of that AutoCAD edition and our optimization suite. And then in June of '21, we released our AutoCAD Evaluation version. Basically, it's a free version that anybody can download and use with the with the current versions of AutoCAD. And then in October, just now, we just released our 3D animator which is also tied into the suite, specifically inside Inventor.
So what's the value that the simulation brings? It basically allows us to predict how something will actually function in a factory, in a layout, taking into account variability, complexity constraints, and all the interdependencies. And then in a house, typically helps in doing things like maximizing throughput, minimizing cycle time, increasing resource utilization, and actually help to identify and eliminate bottlenecks.
The methodology we use is pretty straightforward, but in order to truly understand how your process works, you need to first visualize it. So what we do is we actually construct the virtual model in the computer of the process and be able to run it out into the future, and look at the key output reports to identify how it's performing today, so that we can then analyze it by looking at very specific key performance indicators and output reports to understand where the opportunities are to make it better. So changes in layouts; looking at different demand profiles on the process; changing rates, times, equipment options; basically anything that you can do to your facility, you could do it in the virtual world on the computer and you come up with all those options if you go over the levers that you'd like to experiment with. So that you can then optimize the layout in the process.
And the way we optimize it is a number of ways, but the most straightforward ways, people create multiple scenarios by experimenting with, again, whatever your options may be: number of people, number of equipment, the way processes run, whatever it may be. And you run all those scenarios and then compare the output side-by-side in the output report viewers.
So the ProModel Optimization Suite, as I mentioned, has been out for many years, has a lot of very powerful capabilities inside it. So specifically, around material handling where you have conveyors, forklifts, AGVs, cranes, robots, whatever it may be. And it has the simulation engine, which, again, is a discrete end simulation. So what it does is it literally runs events over time and you can see out a week, two weeks, a month, a year, whatever it may be. And then it also allows you to tie the models to all different types of data sources, so typically, people might want to use Excel sheets or tied to a database or maybe--
And then, finally, it comes with an output viewer that allows you to build dashboards of the key performance indicators that you're looking at, to see the trade offs of different options in different scenarios, as well as then we provide an optimizer which allows you to design experiments around certain parameters you might want to change in certain objective functions you like to you like to reach your goals. So the output viewer, again, is designed to be both ad hoc, so you can pretty much slice and dice your data any way you want, and then save off predefined dashboards.
So this is a little demo that was put together by the Autodesk team, which I think it kind of explains how to use the tool and the values of using the tool.
PAUL MUNFORD: How efficient is your production facility? When you're asked to revise your facility's layout to increase production, how do you decide what ideas to put forward? How do you know what impact each alternative proposal would have on your facility? Even the most efficient production facilities can hit unexpected bottlenecks when ramping up production. ProModel AutoCAD Edition is used to model, study, and optimize your manufacturing process using your existing AutoCAD layout generated with Autodesk Factory Design Utilities. By visualizing and animating or production process directly with AutoCAD, you can better understand how your manufacturing process really works, rather than how you've been assuming that it works.
By simulating your process, you can optimize production line performance and identify potential bottlenecks before they occur on the factory floor. Using the familiar tools in AutoCAD, ProModel can help you build a digital process model of your facility using your mechanical equipment designs from your Autodesk Factory Design Utilities asset library. Assets from your Autodesk Factory Design Utilities library can be used to define locations where your components will be processed. Entities represent the raw materials or components that will be processed in your facility. Flows determine the order of locations for processing entities, and conveyors can be used to move entities between locations. Resources represent additional equipment, devices, or people that move entities along path networks between locations to support your production line.
For example, resources could be allocated for loading and unloading components, quality checking, or maintenance. In this example, we're working with an existing production line layout modeled in AutoCAD. Using ProModel AutoCAD Edition, we've defined how our components will move through the facility on their journey from raw material to the finished product. Using the ProModel tool set, we'll run a baseline simulation to ensure that our model reflects our facility's current output.
The animated simulation runs directly with AutoCAD and helps us to visualize our current production line process to better understand how it's functioning. When the simulation is complete, the ProModel output viewer allows us to build a dashboard and reports from the simulation analytics to focus on the metrics that suit our business goals. In our example, our business has asked us to grow production by 40% over the coming year. Using the ProModel tool set, it's a simple step to add alternative scenarios to our simulation and rerun the analytics to compare our proposed alternatives with the current baseline. Starting with our baseline analytics, we can see that our current production line hits a bottleneck at the thread cutting machine, which is 100% utilized, preventing our production line from increasing output.
But this doesn't worry us, because we can now use our process model to compare upgrades to the production line to find out the most cost-effective way to remove the production line bottleneck and meet the uplift in output. In our example, the bottleneck is at the thread cutting machine, but what's the cause of the bottleneck? To answer this question, we can compare the addition of an extra thread cutting machine with the addition of an extra worker, or the addition of both. Our baseline report shows us that the thread cutting machine is 100% utilized.
What would happen if we increase the number of parts we can make at the thread cutting location by adding a second thread cutting machine? We can see that the output from the thread cutting machines is steadily building, but overall finished components have actually gone down. What's the story here? If we look at our thread cutting location, we can see that it is now idle 50% of the time. So perhaps the bottleneck isn't the machines at all.
Looking at our resources, we can see the pre-assembly worker is nearly 100% utilized. Perhaps the worker can't keep up with the supply of parts from the thread cutting station. What would happen if we added an additional pre-assembly worker instead of an additional thread cutting machine? With a single thread cutting machine and two pre-assembly workers, production increases from 220 parts to 228. We can see that the thread cutter output buffer is empty nearly 50% of the time. This means that downstream production isn't receiving enough components. Our pre-assembly workers are now only 50% utilized, but our thread cutting machine is still running at 100% capacity. So the pre assembly workers are clearing the parts and the threat cutting machine output faster they can be produced, and now the thread cutting machine is our bottleneck.
Our final scenario compares the addition of both an extra thread cutting machine and an extra worker. We can see that the workers can steadily clear the buffer of both thread cutting machines, increasing the throughput from 222 to 317 total exits. This is an increase of 43%, well over the 40% target. In this case, we find that the optimal solution is to have both an extra worker and a new thread cutting machine to remove the bottleneck and increase production to meet our target. Not only do we have an answer to our problem, but we have the analytics to demonstrate how we found the solution and make our case to management for a new hire and capital expenditure to meet our desired production target.
After optimizing your process, open your 2D AutoCAD layout in Autodesk Inventor to generate an accurate 3D model of your production line. The bidirectional sync between AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor automatically converts the 2D AutoCAD layout into a three dimensional model, helping you to coordinate physical clashes between the process line equipment and the building envelope. In Autodesk Navisworks, your 3D model can now be combined with your project schedule to plan and simulate the installation process of your new or revised production line, helping to prevent on-site delays and reducing the need for contingency budgets.
Digitize your production facility and turn change from a risk into an opportunity by planning, validating, and optimizing your production facility with the Autodesk Factory Design Utilities in the product design and manufacturing collection and ProModel AutoCAD edition.
KEITH VADAS: OK so I think Paul Munford very eloquently shows how the tools used actually gain value and solve problems. At this point, what I'm going to do is actually go into the tool itself and give you a little quick tour and then show you how our 3D animation works as well. So I'm going to jump over to AutoCAD real quick and inside AutoCAD, when ProModel's installed, it's actually our own ribbon right inside the AutoCAD environment. And it has a number of different icons up here to go into what we call "simulation browser," simulation properties, which explains the different rates and times or whatever it may be, as well as modeling elements. We run the simulation, do "simulation run," and then there's a scenario manager that he showed earlier, where you can go in and set up different experiments or whatever it may be.
And we can also jump into the Output Report Viewer, as well as even push the model back into our full ProModel engine itself. So the current version of the ProModel AutoCAD edition has quite a few capabilities, but not all the capabilities that are still in our current ProModel suite, so many times people, to do more advanced features and add more capabilities to their models, they'll just push it back out to our ProModel software product, and then it will sync seamlessly back with the AutoCAD version. So you can actually then run the model both in our ProModel as well as in the AutoCAD edition.
So in this case, I'm just going to go ahead and hit "simulate" and you can actually see the actual model running in kind of the 2D right inside AutoCAD. Similar to what Paul had shown in the video. It actually comes out and runs it, runs the animation very quickly. I can actually turn the animation off, I can pan and zoom, do a lot of different things. In this case, I'm just going to run the animation to the end very quickly. And then at the end, I can jump into an output viewer if I'd like to really experiment the outputs, similar to what Paul had showed. Or, at this point, let's say I wanted to then see that same animation, but in 3D. So it's as simple as going over to the factory menu and then opening the model in Inventor. So if I click on the Inventor button, it'll now ask me to save the drawing and now open it up inside Inventor.
So by using the factory assets that come in the Factory Design Utilities in the PDMC collection, it now allows you to, if you will, very simply and easily turn that to 2D drawing into a 3D image of your facility. So now we have the 3D image of the facility. So Inventor, we also have a plug-in ribbon for ProModel, which allows us to do a couple of things. One is to go in and check the placement of how the work will be placed in each one of the machines when I run the 3D animation, or just simply open the animation. So if I click on "Open Animation," what it does now is it actually takes the script from the model I ran previously in AutoCAD. It will now animate that in true 3D in Forge, so this is actually the Forge platform by Autodesk that will now allow me to run the animation.
So if I hit "Play," we have a little bar down here I can speed up or slow down the animation and I can kind of zoom in and zoom out, or look at different aspect ratios of the actual layout and the floor. So not only do you get the 2D animation, but you can also now get the 3D animation after you've built the model in AutoCAD.
So I hope that gives you a good idea for the tool and the capabilities of the tool. We'll go back up here. So again, the critical questions that people typically are using the suite of products to figure out is, number one, will it fit? So by doing the layout inside the building, on the floor plan, in a fully to-scale layout, they understand the actual dimensional of their process: where it's going to fit, how it'll fit in the facility. And then with the ProModel, helps determine, will it perform? Can it meet their goals? And you can show it quantifiably that it will meet your objectives.
So the workflow really starts with the creation of a layout. What we've done for many, many years is many people, most people, if not all people, built their layouts of their facilities in AutoCAD, so it made perfect sense for us to say, hey you know why don't we just add the simulation capability right inside AutoCAD as well. So anyone can work right off of that drawing that's to scale, not have to rebuild the elements outside of the AutoCAD environment. So step one is to build the actual layout. Step two-- and actually the model on top of the layout-- step two is typically then to go out and simulate it and run different scenarios. So that you can then, step three, view the output metrics to determine which your best course of action is for, to which scenario you like the best. And then step four is then the process optimization, so you can make whatever changes in the category.
So if I find out in the simulation that I need another machine, as what we showed earlier in the video, or if I wanted to change the layout, or if I wanted to change the conveyor, or add fork trucks instead of people, whatever it may be. You can go back to your drawing, make whatever enhancements to the drawing, and then finally, once you've simulated your final scenario, you can then bring the model over into Inventor, and actually do the animation in 3D and show other colleagues within the organization the end result in the 3D animation.
So the current technology platforms we have is-- I explained earlier-- is the ProModel AutoCAD Edition which is the plug-in that goes inside AutoCAD and it requires AutoCAD editions in the Product Manufacturing Design Collection, PDMC, as well as Factory Design Utilities, which is in that. And then we have the evaluation version, which is a free version, and it can be downloaded and used. It has some limited capability and I'll go a little bit the difference between that and the full version. And then finally, we have the 3D animator which is also an add-on plug-in to Inventor.
So what we see now is one of the advantages of tying simulation to the Autodesk collection is that we engage a lot more users and a lot more collaboration across the users. So you have your layout engineers, your process engineers, manufacturing engineers, working with industrial engineers, architects, whatever it may be, as well as even the decision-makers can all be involved in the process through the visualization of both the model, the simulation, the animation of the model, as well as the output reports.
So the different kind of limited capabilities in the evaluation version versus the full version. It does give you the capability to go in and run simulations and look at the simulations with your Factory Assets and do basic models. It also then will sync to Inventor still. Allows you to run scenarios or basic analysis scenarios and basic reports. The more full version then gives things like mobile resources, labor material handling, an extensive logic builder, more modeling conveyors or advanced multiple scenario comparison analysis report. So it has a few more features in the full version, but by all means, feel free to download the evaluation version and take it for a ride.
So the current pricing model, again, is the free version which requires, again, AutoCAD and the PDMC Factory Design Utilities. It does have all the capabilities inside AutoCAD, provides a basic modeling capabilities, and allows users to try the workflow out. The full AutoCAD addition is a subscription per year, and that is the full version that we talked about. It's $2967 a year per seat. And then the 3D animation with the ProModel AutoCAD edition is $3467. So that hopefully gives you a quick idea of the capabilities of the ProModel AutoCAD edition, how it interfaces with the PDMC and the Autodesk tools. OK, thank you all very much for your time. At this point, I guess I'll open it up for any questions.