CONCORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--aPriori, the leading provider of digital manufacturing software, announces today that the United States Patent and Trademark office has awarded the company an exclusive patent for its revolutionary design for manufacturability technology (Reference Application Number 16/044,927).
Design for Manufacturability (or DFM) is the process by which engineers optimize their designs so that the product can be manufactured successfully and as efficiently as possible. This includes solving for material utilization, specialized tooling or operations required, machine capabilities and feasibility rules. Many companies are turning to solutions like aPriori Cost Insight to simulate the manufacturing process within a digital factory.
aPriori Cost Insight digital manufacturing software is used by some of the world’s most sophisticated product manufacturers, delivering millions of dollars in cost savings and production efficiencies year in and year out since 2005. Companies like Carrier, General Electric, CNH Industrial, Caterpillar, Arrival and Flex are using aPriori to address the following types of business challenges:
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Design & Engineering Teams:
- Lack of knowledge or insight into manufacturing challenges and cost drivers
- Fragmented access to cost engineers during the development process
- Lack of early visibility to information for product investment or kill decisions
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Sourcing & Buyers:
- Limited access to benchmark data/should costs to know fair market product costs for various manufacturing/buying strategies
- Lack of early visibility to the engineering pipeline
- Selecting suppliers with the right capabilities
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Suppliers Quoting New Business:
- Good estimating requires deep manufacturing expertise, many of whom are now retired
- Aggressive customer production timelines and expectations for response
- Estimating is typically manual, takes too long and can be inconsistent across different members of the cost estimating team
Key technology elements of the awarded DFM patent that differentiate aPriori from any other solution on the market today include:
- aPriori provides customers with the capability to create a digital thread between the digital twin (3D CAD model) and any of the company’s 79 benchmark digital factories that represent manufacturing facilities around the world.
- Automated manufacturing simulation that allows new or modified digital twins to be automatically evaluated for potential manufacturability issues with no intervention by the design or engineering team. Users only need to get involved when a DFM issue is identified.
- Visual identification of potential manufacturability issues through an easy to interpret heat map overlayed onto the CAD model.
- Manufacturing guidance that presents the end user with potential solutions to eliminate problems identified by the analysis.
- A manufacturing routing engine that evaluates every possible manufacturing route within a digital factory to find the optimal solution that maximizes efficiency and minimizes cost.
- Creation and costing of a complete tooling bill of material.
Arnie Greenfield, aPriori’s Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer, commented “Our product management and software engineering teams have worked tirelessly over the past few years to design and implement these unique capabilities. The design for manufacturability functionality identified in this patent is something that should be on the desktop of every CAD designer, engineer, sourcing specialist and cost engineer. It is a real game changer. By identifying potential manufacturing issues early in the design process, we dramatically cut down on engineering change orders that slow down the release to manufacturing process and jeopardize time to revenue. For members of the sourcing team, having detailed manufacturing data and a “should cost” value available creates the opportunity for a fact-based negotiation with suppliers around manufacturing operations versus just hammering them for a better price.”
About aPriori
aPriori is the leading provider of digital manufacturing software that brings product design, sourcing teams and supplier teams closer together to close the gap between design and production. By leveraging the digital twin with our digital factories, we automatically generate design for manufacturability (DFM) and design for cost (DTC) insights, helping manufacturers collaborate across the product development process to make better design, sourcing and manufacturing decisions that yield higher value products in less time. aPriori solutions are now available either in the cloud or on-premise. To learn more about aPriori, visit www.apriori.com or call 1.978.371.2006.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Manufacturing Simulation & Product Costing Blog
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