Supply-side automation and component diversification of Plyable's online manufacturing marketplace: efficient and agile CNC manufacturing

Plyable 在线制造市场的供应方自动化和组件多样化：高效、敏捷的 CNC 制造

• 批准号: 57068
• 金额: $ 9.34万
• 依托单位: PLYABLE LTD
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Feasibility Studies
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=57068
• 关键词: Supply; side; automation; component; diversification

Virtually everything that is manufactured requires CNC machining at some point; more than £80bn worth of components are produced every year. While modern processes like 3D printing have enabled rapid prototyping and spurred innovation, the real business of manufacturing relies ondecades-old spreadsheets, late-night phone calls and hand-wringing, making the process slow and incredibly inefficient. As a result, CNC-machined components are time-consuming and expensive to make, requiring experts in design, tooling and manufacture to work together to produce a final product. Nowhere is this more true than in composites manufacturing, where a significant amount of time and 40--60% of upfront cost for a part is in tooling design and manufacture.Plyable recognised that there is a large amount of underutilised capital assets in the high-performance/low-volume manufacturing industry and the business model aggregates this capacity via a free-to-use online manufacturing platform. Plyable built an automated, instantaneous quote package based on calculated component properties and calculated CNC information which they then incorporated into an existing frontend web interface. Essentially, this brought mould design and manufacture under one roof for the first time with first-of-its-kind digital manufacturing technology to allow immediate pricing and ordering. By maximising machine utilisation and minimising needless human-to-human interactions, a recent study by GKN aerospace demonstrated that, on average, the resulting Plyable process reduces upfront costs by 20% and lead times by 44%.In this project, Plyable will introduce supply-side automation to its business model for the first time, delivering further efficiencies to the benefit of both sides of the marketplace, while simultaneously opening the online platform to non-composite components. The resulting enhanced offering will automatically select and alert potential manufacturers based on product information, aggregating and utilising the capacity of Plyable's vast network of CNC machine shops housing in excess of 1000 CNC machines to allow high-volume production runs; an innovation that leverages existing outsourced CNC machine capability and capacity across the UK that competitors cannot achieve with in-house manufacturing (e.g. protolabs) or by selling autonomous CNC manufacturing hardware (e.g. CloudNC). As a result, the first-of-its-kind industrial digital technology (IDT) developed in this project will tackle the urgent societal need for rapid high-performance/high-volume manufacture of custom CNC-made components that go into life-saving healthcare equipment like the ventilators and CPAP devices being developed by VentilatorChallengeUK, Dyson, Babcock, Science Group, MercedesF1 and many more; thereby supporting efforts to accelerategovernment and private procurement of urgent equipment via domestic supply chains.ADDITONAL INFORMATION –Plyable also sees significant benefit to the manufacturing landscape by allowing access to the supply side network, and in turn their customers, ofthe significant enhancements and efficiency savings that Plyable digital first approach allows. A new product will be created that allows users to be able to run all orders through one system not only orders originated from Plyable customers thereby having access to automation and transparency features on 100% of orders.

几乎所有制造的东西都需要CNC加工;每年生产价值超过800亿英镑的组件。虽然像3D打印这样的现代工艺已经实现了快速原型设计并刺激了创新，但真实的制造业务依赖于几十年前的电子表格，深夜电话和手绞，使得这个过程缓慢且效率低下。因此，CNC加工的部件制造起来既耗时又昂贵，需要设计、工具和制造方面的专家共同努力才能生产出最终产品。在复合材料制造业中，这一点尤为明显。在复合材料制造业中，模具设计和制造需要花费大量时间和40- 60%的前期成本。Plyable认识到，在高性能/低产量制造业中，有大量未充分利用的资本资产，其商业模式通过免费使用的在线制造平台来整合这些能力。Plyable基于计算的组件属性和计算的CNC信息构建了一个自动化的即时报价包，然后将其整合到现有的前端Web界面中。从本质上讲，这首次将模具设计和制造带到了一个屋檐下，采用了首创的数字制造技术，可以立即定价和订购。通过最大限度地提高机器利用率和最大限度地减少不必要的人与人之间的互动，GKN航空航天公司最近的一项研究表明，平均而言，由此产生的Plyable流程可将前期成本降低20%，交货时间缩短44%。在该项目中，Plyable将首次将供应方自动化引入其业务模式，进一步提高效率，使市场双方受益，同时向非复合组件开放在线平台。由此产生的增强产品将根据产品信息自动选择和提醒潜在制造商，聚合和利用Plyable庞大的CNC机床车间网络的能力，该网络拥有超过1000台CNC机床，以实现大批量生产运行;一项创新，利用现有的外包数控机床的能力和能力，在英国，竞争对手无法实现与内部制造（例如protolabs）或通过销售自主CNC制造硬件（例如CloudNC）。因此，该项目中开发的首个工业数字技术（IDT）将解决快速高性能/大批量制造定制CNC制造组件的迫切社会需求，这些组件将用于救生医疗设备，如VentilatoreUK，Dyson，Babcock，Science Group，MercedesF 1等开发的呼吸机和CPAP设备;从而支持通过国内供应链加速政府和私人采购紧急设备的努力。附加信息-Plyable还看到了通过允许访问供应方网络，进而访问其客户，Plyable数字优先方法所带来的显著增强和效率节省。将创建一个新产品，允许用户能够通过一个系统运行所有订单，而不仅仅是来自Plyable客户的订单，从而可以访问100%订单的自动化和透明度功能。