Your benchmarking tool for brilliance

It was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who said ‘The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes’. For some of us, that scotoma is everywhere in our business and we just don’t know it. But what if you could find the ‘blindspots’ and unlock the utopia of perfect process flow and profitability? Now, Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence is offering manufacturers that opportunity with its ‘7 Steps to Machine Shop Excellence’.
Almost every business has bottlenecks that are obvious to identify, but to dig into the deepest darkest corners, you would probably need a comprehensive audit by the likes of Deloitte or KPMG. Thankfully, Hexagon has done all the hard yards. It hasn’t just developed an ecosystem of solutions, but it has also created a ‘global’ platform to incorporate all manufacturing stages into a seamless, streamlined workflow. Essentially, Hexagon has the tools to provide a full transformational journey – and it all begins with its benchmarking tool.
The benchmarking tool has two questions for each of the seven steps – and each question takes less than 30 seconds to answer. Once you complete the survey, you will receive a business performance report with a ‘playbook’ on how to map your route to success. The benchmarking tool has been rolled out worldwide to give manufacturers a true indication of how healthy their technology ecosystem is in comparison to their peers. The playbook will provide suggested areas for improvement whilst a ‘follow-up’ consultation with a Hexagon expert will identify your blindspots.
With this new tool, the 7-steps and its digital platforms, Hexagon is empowering machine shops to optimise operations across their workflows, allowing for streamlined and more efficient ‘Design, Make and Inspect’ practices. Commenting upon the roll-out, VP of General Manufacturing at Hexagon, Jason Walker says: “A typical manufacturing business consists of several different ‘silos’ with design, quoting and planning all being far removed from the production floor, which in itself often works with different processes and systems to manufacture, manage quality control and conduct inspections – and these are just a few of the many silos. When quoting for jobs, businesses often work from spreadsheets and tribal knowledge of the business and processes.”
“Challenges at the early quoting stage can arise from a disconnect between evaluating the design and the preparation for the manufacturing step, without calculating accurate cycle times relevant to the correct resources, such as machines and tools available. With machine and tool library information stored in Hexagon CAM suites, this is just one process that can be streamlined. Likewise, the same CAD file can be converted and utilised differently in the production department to the inspection department, causing further discrepancies. Our aim is to break down the departmental silos, eliminate discrepancies and find the hidden value in the seams between the processes,” Jason continues.

Taking your first step…
The first step for any manufacturer is to access the free benchmarking tool (https://machineshop.hexagon.com), complete the survey and then start an exciting journey. In essence, the benchmarking tool takes manufacturers through the complete life cycle, starting with quoting and planning. At step 1, machine shops need to adopt more strategic quoting and planning processes that are connected. Striving to balance resource allocation, synchronised machine schedules and seamless work order tracking can be a challenge – so optimising the workflow from the start is critical. Here, Hexagon has technology like DESIGNER that offers design-for-manufacturability capabilities for smarter manufacturing, the Nexus digital reality platform also breaks departmental silos by connecting people and technologies across departments and integrates with tools such as Datanomix, the automated production intelligence system.
Many of Hexagon’s platforms stretch across all 7 steps and in step 2 (design and review), Nexus and DESIGNER work together seamlessly to enable real-time collaboration on design reviews . At Step 3, Hexagon leverages the latest technology to ensure design integrity is maintained throughout manufacturing. Even the planning of downstream processes such as measurement and inspection can be managed here.
Steps 4 through 7 incorporate production intelligence, shop-floor operations and quality inspection, with the final step being reporting and analytics that provide insights into the health of all prior stages. Throughout the 7 steps to manufacturing excellence, Hexagon’s hardware and software works harmoniously with existing solutions to break down departmental ‘silos’ and deliver the hidden benefits of digital manufacturing throughout each step and department.