Identify & Eliminate Manufacturing Obstacles
Before They Slow Down Production
Digital Factories provide manufacturability analysis and directional costing that give design teams and engineers an incentive to design for manufacturing (DFM), reduce engineering change orders (ECOs), and launch products on schedule.
Digital factories also provide sourcing teams with the capability to compare production environments across an extensive range of manufacturing criteria to evaluate fully burdened manufacturing costs and inform site selection. For a given product design, use digital factories to identify and select less expensive raw materials, cheaper manufacturing processes offering faster cycle times, and alternative finishing options.
What is a Digital Factory?
A digital factory is a digital representation of a physical factory. It has all of the key elements you would find if you walked into any production facility, including:
Digital factories include libraries of thousands of different types of materials with all their physical properties and cost.
A digital factory contains thousands of different types of machines for different types of manufacturing, including sheet metal fabrication, plastic molding, machining and many more. For each machine, a digital factory includes all of the performance specifications, such as the feeds, speeds, tooling libraries, power requirements, and operating costs.
In a digital factory, labor is associated with each machine station and indicates how many workers are required to run each station. Also included is the labor cost as a function of time.
Every digital factory must include overhead costs to run the plant, such as heating, lighting, electricity, insurance and more.
What is Digital Factory Software?
An aPriori digital factory is a combination of two key elements: aPriori Regional Data Libraries and aPriori Manufacturing Process Models. Out-of-the-box digital factories are a baseline configuration for a production deployment. They provide benchmark estimates and manufacturing guidance. The analyses produced are based on general and reasonable manufacturing practices and average rates not specific to an individual industry. aPriori Digital Factories can be configured to represent specific manufacturing practices and cost structures of your internal facilities or even those of a trusted supplier.Key Components of an aPriori Digital Factory
Regional Data Libraries
87 Regions of the world updated
quarterly
quarterly
Manufacturing Process Models
440+ manufacturing process models that simulate manufacturing processes and calculate associated costs
Regional Data
- Labor rates
- Machine overhead rates and inputs
- Indirect overhead rates and inputs
- SG&A and material overhead rates
- Tool data
Globally Consistent Data
SEE HOW IT WORKS DOWNLOAD DATA SHEET
Process Capability & Routing Rules
- Available process & routing selections
- Machine feasibility
- Routing rules
- GCD relationship rules
Simulation Outputs
- Process cycle time calculation
- Material utilization
- Tooling costs
- Tool wear/life info.
- Manufacturability analysis & guidance
Benefits of a Digital Factory
