[step-manufacturing] Minutes of September 19 Conference Call

[Martin Hardwick]

Attendees
--------------
Martin Hardwick, STEP Tools, USA
David Loffredo, STEP Tools, USA
Mikael Hedlind, Scania, Sweden
Alain Brail, Airbus (retired), France
Fiona Zhao, McGill University, Canada
Sid Venkatesh, Boeing, USA
David Odendhal, Boeing, USA
Leon Xu, Boeing, USA
Wen Jiang, Boeing, USA
Larry Maggiano, Mitutoyo, USA
Bob Erickson, Pratt & Whitney, USA
Fred Proctor, NIST, USA,

The IMTS meeting was successful with representatives of three aerospace 
companies, two tooling vendors and three CAM vendors attending. Three 
additional aerospace companies and two additional CAM vendors expressed 
strong interest but were unable to attend on the day due to logistical 
problems. At the meeting we reviewed the CAM data exchange business case 
and the CAM vendors asked for the business advantages to be expressed in 
dollars and cents instead of percentages.

In this call we decided to approach the problem of computing dollar and 
cents in two ways. First NIST has developed a spreadsheet that an 
organization can use to determine its costs due to poor 
interoperability. Links to the tool and its documentation are given 
below. We would like each member company of STEP-Manufacturing to 
complete this analysis and to the extent possible share the results with 
the team.

ftp://www.steptools.com/private/Interoperability_costs/Interoperability_Tool.xlsm 
(150K)
ftp://www.steptools.com/private/Interoperability_costs/Interoperability_Tool_Guide_Final.pdf 
(300K)
ftp://www.steptools.com/private/Interoperability_costs/Measuring_Inadequate_Interoperability_in_the_Manufacturing_Industry.pptx 
(7M)

Downloading data from ftp sites is becoming increasing difficult so 
please contact Martin Hardwick (hardwick at steptools.com) if you are 
unable to access any of the above directly.

The second approach is to refine the benefits spreadsheet developed 
during the STEP-NC testing phase. This spreadsheet is the source of the 
percentage numbers given at IMTS. We agreed that it should be reviewed 
by the participating aerospace companies. A key issue  is that CAM data 
exchange has NOT yet been implemented, so there is nothing to measure. 
However, many companies are using integrated CAD/CAM systems for their 
internal operations and the goal of CAM data exchange is to extend 
similar benefits to external organizations and systems. Consequently we 
can make benefits estimates by measuring the performance of key 
activities before and after the integrated CAD/CAM system was deployed.

ftp://www.steptools.com/private/IMTS/STEP-NC_benefits.pdf

The next telecon will be held on Wednesday October 3rd at the regular 
times. A recording of this meeting is at the following ftp site:

ftp://www.steptools.com/private/Interoperability_costs/stepmanuf_telecon_20120919.wmv

Martin Hardwick
Team Leader STEP-Manufacturing

Action Item
1. All to review the NIST Interoperability costs spreadsheet
2. Boeing and OMAC to review the STEP-NC_benefts spreadsheet