Majenta Engineering Centre (MEC) Rule based design automation from Majenta PLM capture your engineering knowledge and increase productivity by up to 90% Expedite Quality Proposals, Increase Margin Control and Speed Order-to-Cash Times The MEC Engineer-to-Order solution from Majenta PLM addresses the unique challenges of Engineer-to-Order (ETO) manufacturers with a comprehensive approach spanning sales, engineering and manufacturing. By capturing engineering knowledge and using this to automate key business processes across the enterprise, MEC ETO clients have increased sales and win rates while reducing internal operating expenses and shortening lead times for custom products. The solution integrates seamlessly with existing Engineering Resource Planning (ERP), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and CAD systems, helping custom product manufacturers respond to customer-specific orders more rapidly, accurately and efficiently. The MEC ETO solution is part of an emerging class of enterprise software called standards-based engineering designed to capture, manage and reuse corporate intellectual property to automate engineering processes for best-in-class manufacturers. Leading standards-based engineering solutions are flexible, scalable, and designed to enhance and extend existing PLM and ERP implementations. Sales Quotation Solution Common Sales Quotation Challenges and the MEC ETO Solution Value Efficient Quotation of Highly Engineered Products Quoting complex products traditionally requires a large amount of manual effort from multiple groups, especially engineering. Bottlenecks develop when significant product knowledge is required to create a quote. The MEC ETO solution from Majenta PLM captures the latest engineering, manufacturing, and business rules and standards and uses this knowledge in an executable form to automate labour intensive tasks within the quotation process. The result is the ability to consistently produce more accurate quotes, in less time, and win more business. Generating Complete Proposals The development of Sales BOMs, 3D models and 2D drawings for inclusion in custom product proposals is time consuming and requires valuable engineering resources. The MEC ETO solution helps manufacturers improve customer satisfaction by providing complete drawings, detailed BOM and other technical information, plus 3D colour product mock-ups at the time of order, giving your customers confidence in the overall delivery because the order design process is automated, eliminating errors.
Margin Control and Accurate Cost Knowledge Traditional pricing and cost estimation techniques don t work well for complex custom products. With the MEC ETO solution, the true costs of manufacturing and delivering a custom product are automatically factored in at the time of quotation. This eliminates cost estimation guesswork and subsequently the need for price padding to safeguard profitability. With accurate cost knowledge, unprofitable quotes can be avoided and padding can be avoided, resulting in more wins from more competitive pricing. Product Capabilities for Sales Quotation Sales Quotation Capabilities MEC ETO Sales from Majenta PLM lets you provide more accurate sales quotations faster than your competition. More than just a sales configurator it is a powerful tool that fully integrates the sales, engineering and manufacturing processes involved in custom or repetitive order situations, significantly reducing the amount of manual effort required in the quotation process. You will be able to confidently respond to more RFQs with more accurate quotes, shorten lead times and improve your sales win rate. Improve your competitiveness by providing comprehensive sales quotation drawings, detailed Bills of Material and precise 3D visualizations at the point of sale, giving your customers confidence in your capabilities and ensuring that what the customer perceives he is ordering and what you are quoting are one in the same. In addition, you will be able to quote more aggressive delivery dates because the order design process is automated to reduce overall cycle time and eliminate errors. Quote Highly Complex Products Our powerful rule paradigm manages engineering knowledge rather than just feature/option constraints. This fundamental difference from typical sales configurators allows MEC ETO Sales to excel with even the most complex products. Generate Order-Specific 3D CAD Models Companies with ETO processes often need to generate 3D product visualizations as part of the sales quotation process, so that their customers can better understand what is being quoted and have greater confidence in the proposed solution. In addition, some customers require 3D models as part of the proposal process so that they can package those models into their CAD assemblies, thus better ensuring that the proposed solution will meet form and fit requirements. With MEC ETO Sales, such 3D models can be rapidly generated to unique customer requirements at the point of sale. MEC ETO Sales unique ability to dynamically generate new CAD assemblies on the fly eliminates the need to pre-configure all possible 3D CAD assembly configurations prior to making a product available for quoting.
Generate Order-Specific Drawings MEC ETO Sales has the ability to automatically generate native, to-scale, CAD drawings for inclusion within a quotation or bid package. It works with common 3D and 2D CAD packages to produce drawings and models within your or your customer s native CAD system. Easy to use UI Guides Users through Product Selection, Configuration and Design Steps MEC ETO Sales is feature-rich, yet intuitive for sales representatives to use with little or no training. A process window pane allows users to easily navigate through quotation process steps according to your business process rules and select the quotation step they wish to work on. UI forms are easy to use with on-line help available at the click of a mouse. Easily Capture Rules, Best Practices, Standards and Requirements The MEC ETO product line from Majenta PLM streamlines the capture, update, and management of the rules and processes necessary to accurately quote and manufacture products. It provides a simple point-and-click way for non-programmer engineers and product experts to define and refine the rules, processes, and underlying rationale that enable sales and manufacturing to produce higher quality work with real-time accuracy. Quickly Update Rules and Release New Rule Sets With the MEC ETO product line, your product rules can be quickly updated, tested, and released to production. Unlike other solutions, your product configurator needs not be the bottleneck to getting new product capabilities into the hands of your sales and distribution channels. MEC ETO Sales also has the ability to take work-in-progress models and update them automatically when new rule sets become available, a key capability for companies who have long sales cycles. Calculate Cost Based on Material and Labour Roll-ups or Complex Estimation Rules MEC ETO Sales gives your company the ability to rapidly achieve a final product design during the quotation process, allowing for a true cost roll-up based on material, labour, shipping costs, etc., even for highly custom products. In addition, MEC ETO Sales can manage complex cost estimation rules when a true cost roll-up is not required. MEC ETO Sales customers can do margin-based, guided selling with highly dynamic models at quote time. Represent Complex Pricing Rules In addition to bottoms-up costing rules, MEC ETO Sales can capture and manage complex pricing rules. This gives your company ultimate flexibility in how to accurately quote your products. Automatically Create Valid Alternative Configurations MEC ETO Sales has the ability to use context and sub-models to create alternative configurations within a configuration to give customers priced-scenarios that constraint engines have difficulty doing.
Direct Link to Order Engineering MEC s ETO solution is the central repository for product design knowhow. The single, centralized location is easy to maintain and update, and allows multiple departments to work off the same set of rules. This encourages wider adoption/enforcement of best practices and standards, companywide. Also, more reuse means the same information does not need to be entered multiple times. Integrates Easily with CRM or other SFA Solutions and Can Run Within Their User Environments MEC ETO Sales maximizes the value of incumbent systems already in place and removes the barriers between silos of data. Integrates with Microsoft Desktop Tools Including Excel, Visio and Word With MEC ETO Sales, a native user interface can be augmented by live, bi-directional integration with Microsoft Office authoring tools. Excel can be used to input data and report on data, Visio can be used to make or view schematic or layout representations of models and Word can be used as mechanism for output of reports and other important documents. Work Off-Line MEC ETO Sales permits field users to run the system to create quotes and proposals while their laptop computer is disconnected from the Internet, for example while onsite with a client. All job data created offline is automatically uploaded back to a central server once the laptop is back online. In addition, any new rule sets that have been released are automatically synchronized with the laptop so that your offline user community is kept up to date according to your business rules. Thin Client Deployment In addition to a rich client environment, MEC ETO Sales supports thin client, browser-based deployment so that companies can easily support large sales and distribution organizations and support controlled, end user access to product configuration software. Generate Proposal Documents In addition to quotations, MEC ETO Sales helps sales users rapidly generate full blown proposal documents and bid packages that include pricing and product information, technical specifications, product drawings and 3D images, and sales-level BOMs. Use a 2D Interactor to Describe Customer Requirements The configuration of certain products (typically complete systems, architectural products, etc.) requires that the functional or physical layout (or schematic) be specified during configuration. MEC ETO Sales provides the ability for end users to manipulate products using a simple to use 2D layout paradigm. This capability can be delivered either via Microsoft Visio or via our own native 2D interactor.
Order Engineering Solution Common Order Engineering Challenges and the MEC ETO Solution Value Generating Order-Specific Models & Drawings Designing new products to customer specifications is a difficult task if your knowledge base doesn t help drive the creation of unique 3D models and drawings. The MEC ETO solution from Majenta PLM offers deep, bi-directional integrations with the 3D CAD and other enterprise systems you already use; creating new, native CAD models and drawings on-the-fly based on customer requirements and captured rules. Reducing Order Response Time Order engineers are under intense pressure to reduce the time it takes to go from the receipt of an order to the release of the job to the shop floor while increasing quality. The MEC ETO solution significantly reduces design time by automating many of the routine decisions that go into processing customer-specific orders, allowing your engineering team to concentrate on developing product innovations, new features, and completely new products. By automating the routine and repetitive engineering work, the MEC ETO solution can help engineering get out of the repetitive order engineering, order processing, and sales support business and back into innovative engineering. Eliminating Repetitive Errors In the past, a constantly evolving set of design rules, standards, and engineering best practices made it difficult to capture, update and reuse knowledge. As a result, the same errors were often made multiple times. With the MEC ETO solution s central, secure knowledge base, it s easy to capture lessons learned to prevent repetitive errors. The MEC ETO solution establishes a closed loop learning system delivering continuous improvement and facilitating reuse of accurate, updated engineering knowledge. Product Capabilities for Order Engineering Order Engineering Capabilities The MEC ETO product line from Majenta PLM significantly reduces design time by automating many of the decisions that go into processing customer specific orders, freeing your engineering team to concentrate more heavily on developing new product innovations. By automating the routine and repetitive engineering work for each ETO order, MEC ETO Engineer can help engineering get out of the custom engineering, order processing, and sales support business and back into the innovative engineering process.
Generate Order-Specific 3D CAD Models MEC ETO Engineer dynamically creates brand new 3D assemblies on the fly without having to preengineer and pre-validate all possible assemblies. This results in a dramatically reduced number of CAD assemblies to create and maintain. MEC ETO Engineer reduces time required to create new assemblies and ensures that new assemblies are in-line with company rules and standards. Generate Order-Specific Submittal and Manufacturing Drawings MEC ETO Engineer can automatically generate the manufacturing and customer submittal drawings typically produced during the order fulfilment process. Rules regarding view placement, view scale, annotation existence and location, notes, title block information, etc. allow high degrees of drawing automation to be achieved. Automating significant portions of this time consuming task reduces overall order delivery time and reduces costly drawing errors. Execute Analysis & Simulation Tight integrations between desktop engineering software and MEC ETO Engineer allows design data to flow seamlessly from MEC ETO Engineer to the relevant analysis and simulation software and analysis and simulation results to be captured by MEC ETO Engineer to enable rules-based automation of design quality and verification activities. Report Engineering Test & Verification Results The fine grained process-automation of MEC ETO Engineer ensures all tests and verification activities are run before a design is released. The reporting engine can be used to produce both ad-hoc and formal certification reports that may be necessary for each ETO order. Generate Engineering BOMS MEC ETO Engineer s ability to either generate a BOM or model a BOM is superior. MEC ETO Engineer represents the BOM as individual parts that can be manipulated by engineers post-order. MEC ETO Engineer's ability to maintain multiple BOMs in sync also helps to give us an edge in this area. Integrate with ERP & PLM Automation with MEC ETO Engineer does not end with generation of an order-specific design. Interfaces with ERP and PLM systems provide for the automatic flow of all release documents to these systems when an order is released from engineering. It also provides a means to obtain electronically the documents, templates, and part data that is required to support optimal engineering of an order. Change Rules on Daily Basis & Release to User Communities MEC ETO Engineer has the ability to take work-in-progress models and designs, and update them automatically when the latest rule updates become available.
Subject Matter Experts Maintain Rules The rule authoring environment allows engineers to fully define their solution and capture their ETO engineering rules without requiring them to learn a software programming language or software development methodology. All rules and associated applications are constructed through easy-touse forms and wizards. This delivers unprecedented rapid time-to-benefit. The MEC ETO product line from Majenta PLM is a highly scalable solution because knowledge experts themselves interact with the system and are not dependent on specialized IT resources. It allows domain experts to retain ownership of the rules used to automate their respective processes. Powerful Report Writer MEC ETO Engineer has a powerful report writer that enables sophisticated reports to be generated from any of the detailed design information accessible from MEC ETO Engineer. Integrates with Microsoft Desktop Tools Including Excel and Word MEC ETO Engineer is integrated with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word to allow capture of orderspecific information from these sources as well outputting design and model information to these tools for formatting in a familiar desktop tool. Use a 2D Interactor to Describe Customer Requirements The configuration of certain products (typically complete systems, architectural products, etc.) requires that the functional or physical layout (or schematic) be specified during configuration. MEC ETO Engineer provides the ability for end users to manipulate product designs using a simple 2D layout paradigm. This capability can be delivered either via Microsoft Visio or via our own native 2D interactor. Manufacturing Engineering Solution Common Challenges and the MEC ETO Solution Value Pushing Manufacturing Capabilities Upstream In the past, it was very difficult to educate sales and design teams about ever-changing manufacturing capabilities or to incorporate design for manufacturing concepts into these teams. The MEC ETO solution from Majenta PLM allows manufacturing to influence the quotation and design of products from the very beginning. The MEC ETO solution incorporates the rules of manufacturability into the sales and engineering processes upstream, enforcing these often overlooked capabilities and constraints from the outset, resulting in cleaner orders with fewer errors.
Creating Order-Specific Manufacturing Plans It is expensive and time consuming to manually customize manufacturing plans for complex custom orders. With the MEC ETO solution, the high manufacturing costs and long lead-times typically associated with custom orders are significantly decreased because order-specific manufacturing documentation is automatically generated, including in-process drawings, EBOMs, MBOMs, routings, and tool and fixture designs. The solution also automates factory-specific manufacturing plans for companies with multiple plants or partners. Underutilizing Equipment & Capabilities Often, the full ROI from newly purchased, expensive equipment is not realized. Changes in manufacturing capabilities, including new machines, tools and other enhancements can be easily added to the MEC ETO system, so the entire enterprise operates based on the true capabilities of the shop floor. Internal and external customer satisfaction is improved because manufacturing can easily build what has been quoted and designed. Product Capabilities for Manufacturing Engineering Manufacturing Engineering Capabilities The MEC ETO product line from Majenta PLM allows manufacturing to influence the design of products at the point of design creation, and even quotation. MEC ETO Engineer incorporates the rules of manufacturability into the sales and engineering processes upstream, taking advantage of often overlooked capabilities and enforcing constraints from the outset, resulting in cleaner orders with fewer errors. Highly detailed 3D models, drawings, BOMs, and routings can be produced at the time of the sale so that higher fidelity estimates of manufacturing cost can be generated. The cost and lead-times typically associated with custom orders are significantly decreased because engineering and manufacturing documentation is automatically generated, including in-process drawings, EBOMs, MBOMs, routings, and tool and fixture designs. Changes in manufacturing capabilities, including new machines, tools and other enhancements can be easily added to the system, so the entire enterprise operates based on the true, up-to-the-minute capabilities of the shop floor. Design-for-manufacturability rules execute alongside traditional engineering rules when building an optimal design for each order, ensuring manufacturing can easily build what has been quoted and designed. Generate Routings, MBOMs and Work Instructions MEC ETO Engineer automatically generates a report that describes the flow of a product through a manufacturing facility. In the sales cycle this allows a sales rep to accurately quote delivery time and manufacturing costs. For manufacturing it allows an organization to better utilize their facilities and increase visibility of orders moving through their organization. Automatically Feeds Data into CAM MEC ETO Engineer automatically feeds models and data into CAM systems to provide for expedient generation of NC programs.
Generates Tool & Fixture Geometry & Drawings From the parts that are needed to fulfil an order, MEC ETO Engineer automatically generates tool & fixture geometry and drawings. Integrates with ERP, MRP and MES Systems MEC ETO Engineer integrates with MRP and MES systems to electronically pass item master information, product structure (BOMs) and all other data and documents into these systems, driving efficiency and eliminating any chance of data entry errors. Handle Multiple Factory Locations Rules with factory-specific capabilities and limitations can easily be incorporated into the MEC ETO Engineer to allow targeting at order-prep time for any specific factory. To discuss your requirements or to arrange a demonstration, contact us on 01234 757 170