Increasing complexity, exploding costs and inefficient processes are some of the biggest challenges facing machine manufacturers. In this blog, we take a closer look at the causes – and the modular solutions.
The problem of individualisation
For a long time, the mechanical engineering industry was able to rely on the demands of the market for traditional, product-orientated development. For most companies, a not insignificant part of their day-to-day business still consists of customising their solutions to the individual requirements of their customers. As a result, new variations have been created from case to case – for example, robots that have been optimised to suit the local conditions of a factory hall.
Because machines often had to be designed from scratch, both the product portfolio and the internal technical complexity on the manufacturer’s side grew with each individual order: thousands of derivations and adaptations, countless part numbers and product variants increasingly paralysed the companies from the inside out.
In addition to the mass of data and specifications, many departments were more concerned with managing existing solutions, and space for development and innovation was becoming increasingly scarce. Added to this was the sheer volume of spare parts required, the necessary updates for all customised products and the documentation, which involved a great deal of effort. A strategic rethink was ultimately unavoidable for the company’s own efficiency and competitiveness.
A modular system to combat complexity
The answer to the challenges facing the industry is modularisation. This strategy, modelled on a modular system, combines the key advantages of standardised product development with the necessary individual adaptations for customised use by the customer.
The basis for this is formed by interchangeable basic components that can be put together in different ways depending on requirements and thus realise different variants of the same product without having to adapt the entire machine individually.
A modularised approach therefore not only reduces the total number of product variants, but also the complexity costs, i.e. all expenses for the management of all products and the introduction of new solutions. In this way, modularisation also significantly shortens the time to market and relieves the burden on research and development in particular, which can concentrate more on driving innovation forward.
Modularisation is team play
In view of the overwhelming advantages that modularised product development brings, the question arises as to why more companies have not made this change in strategy. The answer lies, on the one hand, in the often underestimated depth of the topic – ideas about the definition and implementation can vary from department to department. On the other hand, a modularised approach in mechanical engineering must take into account all company departments along the entire product life cycle – from sales and purchasing to research and development, product management and marketing, and customer success.
The prerequisite for this is a shared working environment in which all participants can access the same information and work together on projects. In practice, however, knowledge silos and isolated teams still dominate the engineering industry.
This is where mosaixx comes in: the collaborative cloud platform supports the modular approach with its specially developed solution library as a knowledge store and the division of projects into workspaces. This means that employees can easily access the design data stored centrally in the database, even in large volumes, and combine it flexibly in different applications – mobile, secure and in real time!
