Dassault Systemes has released their 2024 update to leading manufacturing ERP system, DELMIAWorks which include significant enhancements to usability and manufacturing productivity.
Focusing on the very latest in technology and ideas from DELMIAWorks’ user base, the development team from Dassault has delivered updates that “improve the user’s experience and streamline day-to-day activities while still driving innovation and imagination for the future of manufacturing”.
We took the opportunity to sit down with Tom Griggs, Solutions Architect at Proximity, to get his views on each of the releases’ highlights.
Shop Floor operator
With assistance from early adopters of DELMIAWorks’ Shop Floor Operators modules, 2024 sees a new user experience for customers, including:
- Dashboard Cloning simplifies implementation and speeds up setup time
- New Print Label Workflow Options to increase accuracy while reducing waste
- Additional Languages to minimise language barriers on the manufacturing floor.
“In a nutshell, this release makes it easier for ‘Shop Floor Operator’ to interact with DELMIAWorks in a simplified, user defined manner, enhancing usability so that it saves time in distributing the functionality out to the wider business.
“With these new changes users can create their own interface with different widgets depending on what role each workcentre does. Users can actually clone these roles across different work centres and clone the same dashboards against each role. Users couldn’t do that before, you had to create each one separately.
“New label printing workflows enable users to trigger the printing of labels based on certain events. So when users complete a work order, for instance, or complete a process, they can have a label printed so that they can scan the barcodes to make sure that they’ve got accurate dispositioning from one station to the next or into stock.”
Real-time Process Monitoring
Automation remains at the very core of DELMIAWorks – and how it enables customers to use ‘real-time data collection to make decisions and course-correct their production operations’. Updates in 2024 include:
- Action Manager enables users to take advantage of new supported technology to bring consistent implementation outcomes for every device using Action Manager to quickly deploy common functions across multiple devices.
- Connections to new devices with new V70 sensing and control units
- Standardise CNC machine data with new support for devices running MTConnect, the open-source standard for collecting data from manufacturing equipment.
- OPC UA Server Support for more robust security for device communications through new support for servers running the OPC Unified Architecture machine-to-machine communication protocol for industrial automation.
“Real-time process monitoring in DELMIAWorks in its most basic terms, monitors things like machine attributes, settings and so on from each machine. And that information is gathered directly from the PLC which we have to map directly to the PLC on the machines. The 2024 release enables connectivity with new devices and new PLCs.
DELMIAWorks can now support UA server, which is basically a piece of middleware, to enable communication with older machines that don’t necessarily have that support”.
Production Control with Assembly Track
Take control of your production floor and prevent users from making reporting errors and producing out-of-spec parts. A new ‘Stop Process’ feature in Assembly Track prevents users from reporting on a process, which can, for instance, prevent reporting of the status for an unscheduled process or a process that is not 100% complete.
Customers can use the ‘Stop Process’ feature based on their needs to reduce and eliminate production reporting errors.
Audits, Compliance, and Traceability
- Stronger Data Protection brings greater encryption capabilities for data fields and personal identifiable information are available in the 2024 release.
- Document Control Electronic Sign-Off means employees can now review and electronically sign off on documents from the web-enabled Employee Portal.
- Serial Number Traceability means researching and auditing inventory transactions and their related serial numbers is now easier with a link directly from the inventory transaction log to the serial number tracking module, providing more fluid traceability.
“Enhanced encryption capabilities that have come in for certain data fields. So, if you’re working with very high compliance industries, where you’ve got sensitive information, it’s starting to work towards some of the conformances required by those industries.
“DELMIAWorks has always had an employee portal, but this new update enables users to sign off documents on the electronic portal. If, for instance, you get a document such as a standard operating procedure or something of that nature, you can sign off to say that you’ve read it and you understand it. So it gives a new level of control and conformity.
“Serial number traceability allows step-by-step serial numbers to link directly to each stage of the assembly. So that if you’ve got something where you might have, for example, in the medical device industry, you have to serialise each item. DELMIAWorks can now support serialisation of each item that’s been produced and keep audit trails on each item produced. So if you want to look at each batch of raw materials that have gone into an assembled item or component, for instance, we now can”.
BI Financial Dashboards
New Financial Summary and Detail Smart Page business intelligence (BI) dashboards with drill-down capabilities are ready for immediate use. Now, you can gain insights with inventory activity cost journal (IACJ) analysis and drill back to account activity to move seamlessly between a quick assessment of general ledger balances and further analysis of the details contributing to variances.
User experience enhancements
- Control and configure resource availability with a more efficient way of adjusting the scheduled days-off for the shop calendar to match your fluctuating machine and labour resource availability.
- Project material shortages with the click of a button using the BOM Tree Explosion feature with its redesigned user interface.
- Provide a better Material Repair and Overhaul (MRO) work order labour management experience by assigning an entire work order to maintenance and tooling team members.
If you’d like to learn more about the 2024 DELMIAWorks release, please contact us.
Posted by Joe on 5th February 2024.