Assembly Drawings consisting of a Bill of Materials only 1

[fogleghorn]

Our Director of Engineering wants to release Solid Edge Assembly Drawings with nothing more than a Bill of Materials on the drawing, no views at all. These "drawings" would then be turned over to Manufacturing Engineering to create Assembly Instructions. The thought behind this new process, would be that it would free up engineers much sooner to work on the next new product. Does anybody else release assembly drawings that are just a Bill of Materials?

 

[KENAT]

Dumb question that would probably never occur to management - why not just put the new drafter in Engineering and keep on keeping on the way you have been?

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[ewh]

Managers tend to be political animals, and adding a drafter to the engineering department for apparently manufacturing related tasks may be seen as an expense that engineering probably feels should be born by manufacturing.
Logically, I would think that engineering would want to keep control of the definition, but I'm not a manager.

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV

 

[truckandbus]

@kenat: In my department we were over on development hours by 3000 hours or so so we pushed the documentation to the M.E. group and miraculously we were back on budget.

 

[drawoh]

Dumb question that would probably never occur to management - why not just put the new drafter in Engineering and keep on keeping on the way you have been?

Good question actually.

If the drafter works for production, who interviews candidates? Who evaluates their work? Who defines and enforces company drafting standards?

I have worked in a place where each department had its own mechanical designer. There were no company standards. There was no capability to detect and either correct or fire idiots. There was no capability to treat mechanical design as a general task that should be reviewed and continuously improved.

--
JHG

 

[fogleghorn]

The way that I have always looked at new product development, is that somebody needs to drive the bus. And with new product development, I believe that somebody, needs to be engineering. Manufacturing Engineering, Service, Marketing, Sales, all play a role in developing new products, but it is not their primary function. However, it is the primary function for Project Management and Engineering.

As a former mechanical engineer, and now a project manager, one thing that I have always believed is that mechanical engineers, and especially the lead mechanical engineer on a project, end up being somewhat of a project manager themselves. If there is going to be any modularity and serviceability in a design, it is typically the mechanical engineer that makes that happen. Project managers can help facilitate making it happen, but it is the mechanical engineers that actually makes it happen through his/her design work. DFMA and collaboration may increase the time it takes to complete the design phase of project, but I believe it is always in the best interest of the company.

How this all plays into the development of assembly documentation isn't crystal clear to me right now. It does appear that there are many different ways of skinning the assembly drawing cat. One thing that I am certain of, is that at the end of the design phase of most design projects, there is no one that knows how a new product is supposed to be assembled and at what level it is supposed to be serviced, better than the mechanical engineer that designed it. The big question always is, how do you transfer that knowledge to the rest of the company, and how do you maintain and preserve the original design intent?

 

[kjoiner]

Hello,

If Engineering only hands a BOM to Manufacturing, how are design specifications communicated to the production floor? Things that come to mind are torque specifications, tolerances for assemblies, adjustments (spring preload, gear backlash, assembly clearances etc.)? The engineers designing the products have all these things in mind and it seems that sooner or later, they will have to pass along that information either on the drawing or through a series of meetings. It's kind of like sending a 3D CAD model to a vendor without any other data such as tolerances, finish, material etc.

I handle the design, fabrication documentation and assembly drawings. I find that creating assembly drawings, even though time consuming, forces me to think about how the product will be built, locate problems and hopefully solve them before they hit the floor. I do work with Production to refine the drawings and consult with them during the creation of the drawings so we are all thinking about how it will be built, how inventory will be managed and any gages, jigs or other tools needed before production starts. It's a "necessary evil" but helps avoid major problems later.

Regarding the drawings themselves, I've used Solid Edge for over 10 years and I'm still spoiled over what I had to do years before using Cadkey. Things that take 10 seconds in Solid Edge to create views, section views etc., used to take me hours or sometimes days in Cadkey. As KENAT mentioned, you do have to avoid the temptation to create a bunch of views just becuase they are easy to throw down on the screen.

Kyle