Challenges of manufacturability and product data management in bending

Effective production in a networking environment of sheet metal products needs accurate and relevant PDM (product data management) data, appropriate modeling of components supported by local and global network solutions, and utilization of advantages of feature-based modeling. To enable these aspects of effective production in sheet metal production, it is necessary to evaluate the integration of DFMA (design for manufacturing and assembly) and PDM. This paper aims at identifying the challenges of DFMA and PDM integration through recognizing possible malfunctioning parts of their integration. The observations are based on sheet metal specimens in which the DFMA and PDM aspects are visible in punching and bending. This study will focus on five issues that are included either in DFMA or PDM, or both: the effects of different calculation methods for the flattened length, utilization viewpoints of global or local manufacturability guidelines, assembly conditions, options to tune the manufacturing process instead of changing the product geometry, and possible additional requirements given by the customers. Based on practical design and manufacturing tests, it has become evident that one option to improve the quality of analyzed sheet metal parts is to further develop the integration of DFMA features with the workshop’s cutting and punching parameters. As one possible improvement to these kinds of integration tasks of DFMA and PDM, it is suggested that the responsibilities for developing DMFA and PDM applications with proper design parameters could be analyzed more deeply between persons working with information exchange, product design, software design, or production machine design.