Following the strict quality management and regulatory compliance standards in the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors can be challenging. To simplify the required quality management tasks, manufacturers need powerful process planning solutions — including tools for data capture, documentation, production scheduling and more.
That’s where DISCUS Software comes in.
The DISCUS Process Planning Suite combines powerful software, simplified workflows and expert support to create one comprehensive solution. Its three main modules work together to enable easier documentation at every step of your process planning approach.
What Is Process Planning?
Process planning is essentially a group of tasks that help create the framework for production operations. It helps outline the steps necessary to bring a product from design to completion, outlining the most efficient path to success. Process planning also:
- Allows managers to identify, source and price production parts.
- Creates transparency into varied factors, such as shipping routes and production scheduling.
- Ensures processes can consistently meet product specifications.
- Helps control the overall manufacturing cost.
Effective process planning lays the groundwork for everything from inventory management to production control, enabling you to efficiently and uniformly create high-quality products. The typical process plan involves manufacturing, process and quality engineers, all combining a variety of ad hoc tools to create shared work instructions. With this information, multiple teams can complete complex assembly processes without interruption to ensure compliance with strict and essential regulatory requirements.
Benefits of Effective Process Planning
When created with the appropriate tools, a manufacturing process plan can introduce valuable benefits to the entire operation. Examples include:
Quality Management
Accurate process and outcome documentation is essential to ensure the right teams identify and resolve issues — not just to meet efficiency and project goals but to protect end-user safety. This level of quality management is particularly essential in industries such as aerospace and medical, where even the slightest deviation could impact the product’s usability.
Collaboration
Effective process planning enables stronger collaboration between teams at different levels. For example, when engineers can utilize platform technology to examine and record pertinent part data, it’s easier for downstream teams to take that information and build upon it throughout the manufacturing process. The resulting documentation — and product — aligns with industry-specific governance and regulation.
Visibility
A process plan helps capture, share and utilize information from a variety of sources — all without losing details in translation. This ensures every stakeholder is “speaking the same language” during decision-making, project management, budgeting and more.
Resource Allocation
Process planning establishes a baseline for resource allocation. When it’s clear what needs to be done and when, leaders can more effectively analyze resource needs and respond accordingly. This minimizes waste and improves operational efficiency simultaneously.
Flexibility
A strategic plan acts as a framework for the entire manufacturing operation. When created correctly, this you can update or shift this plan in response to new data, allowing organizations to remain flexible and agile despite challenges (such as supply chain disruptions) or discoveries (such as an improved process or new technology).
The Flaws and Challenges of Standard Process Planning
Process planning can take different forms depending on the operation, industry and associated requirements. However, in many cases, standard or “good enough” approaches create overcomplicated steps like these:
- An engineer utilizes a complex and expensive computer-aided design (CAD) platform to analyze a part and extract pertinent details.
- They upload notes and calculations into programs like Excel and Word.
- The engineer progresses to PowerPoint and Paint to create manufacturing documentation.
- Finally, they combine the necessary salient data (operations, work centers, durations, etc.) into the enterprise resource planning system.
Notice that, in this case, the engineer is required to navigate multiple platforms, meaning there are numerous opportunities for technological and human error. The compounding effect of one minor oversight could have implications that affect the entirety of the objective, putting the organization at risk of violating regulatory compliance.
For example, in the aerospace industry, teams must complete accountability checks as part of AS9102 documentation, a specific regulatory requirement for manufacturing and quality. There are three forms to complete, each presenting new opportunities for a small oversight or data error to complicate future production steps:
- Part number accountability: As part of the First Article Inspection, this form includes names, serial numbers and report numbers.
- Product accountability: This layer helps specify raw materials, special processes and testing.
- Characteristic accountability: This process evaluates verification and compatibility.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are many potential mistakes involved in this complex, often manual process, including:
- Incorrectly establishing process validation procedures.
- Not accurately documenting all activities.
- Failing to review/evaluate processes after changes/process deviations have occurred.
- Failing to evaluate/validate product functionality and packaging integrity.
Given the complex nature of proper process planning documentation, many manufacturers have turned to comprehensive platform solutions to ease the burden on their workforce.
Top Process Planning Solutions
Ensuring that your teams address and validate every characteristic from the Technical Data Package (TDP) during production is an important objective of process planning — but it has remained an elusive one. Successful process planning documentation requires meticulous attention to detail, which can become daunting when inspecting detailed elements of parts through complicated CAD models.
Fortunately, DISCUS can help reduce the stress of your manufacturing protocols. As experts in software solutions for highly regulated industries, we’re in a perfect position to provide technology that services multiple manufacturing and quality assurance activities.
DISCUS Process Planning Suite
The DISCUS solution for process planning, Process Planning Suite, combines DISCUS Desktop and Discuss Planner.
DISCUS Desktop allows you to create and manage the TDP. With simple drag-and-drop functionality, you can quickly identify characteristics and requirements from both 2D drawings and specification documents. The simplicity and ease of use will increase productivity while reducing process design errors.
Desktop combines Google-based OCR technology with unique image processing capabilities that can identify, annotate and extract engineering requirements from multiple formats, including PDF or TIFF. This functionality relieves tedious manual extraction and serves as the foundation for your manufacturing and project management activities.
DISCUS Planner manages the characteristics relevant to specific operations and handles the creation of process illustrations and work instructions. DISCUS Planner reduces the time and effort required to create detailed setup verification and operation inspection sheets. In addition to these primary features, DISCUS Planner automatically generates an operations analysis to indicate characteristics and “delta” values by operation.
By combining the drawing/model and Bill of Characteristics, DISCUS offers a complete solution that enables your workforce to generate a structured set of manufacturing documentation. This includes a summary routing and, for each operation, the work instructions, inspection sheets and process illustrations. This helps reduce errors by addressing all characteristics during the specific manufacturing steps.
The use of DISCUS Planner has reduced the time involved in creating manufacturing planning documentation by upwards of 50%.
Simplify Process Planning With DISCUS
Your business deserves the operational advantage only a planning process solution can offer.
That’s especially true for ensuring efficiency in the face of compliance with manufacturing and quality assurance expectations — a complex yet crucial challenge across many industries.
That’s why DISCUS Software is here to help. We designed our suite of solutions with real users in mind, working with our clients to improve features and functionality for maximized usability. That means you’ll benefit from a combination of process planning solutions designed to work in even the most fast-paced, heavily regulated environments.
You can learn more about the specific DISCUS modules on the Products page, and you can review the pricing for the discounted bundles on the Pricing page.
Have questions? Ready to see how DISCUS solutions fit your processes? Reach out today to get started:
