Project Background

Suzhou Suzhu Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd., formerly known as Suzhou Foundry Machinery Factory established in 1962, boasts a history of nearly 60 years. Nestled in the picturesque ancient city of Suzhou, "Suzhu" brand is one of China's influential brands for foundry equipment. The company has produced over 7,000 types of shooting core machines, more than 5,100 molding machines, and over 200 automatic static pressure molding lines, serving customers across China and around the world. Committed to providing satisfactory products and excellent service to the foundry industry, this remains the eternal theme for the "Suzhu People".

Bearing the dream and historical mission of becoming an industrial powerhouse, the "Suzhu" people continuously strive with dedication to realize their ambition of making Suzhu a renowned Chinese foundry equipment brand.

Since the 1960s, Suzhu has been manufacturing jolt-squeeze molding machines and related production lines. In 1989, it successfully developed pneumatic impulse molding lines. Then, in 2004, its experienced design team independently designed fully automatic static pressure molding lines with flasks which were launched into the market. To date, Suzhu has provided hundreds of such fully automatic static pressure molding lines to its clients.

The Z86 series hot core box shooting machine is a new type of bottom-up core shooter featuring full automation and high efficiency. It includes two stations for shooting cores and removing them, suitable for horizontal parting core-making of up to 80kg. With demolding and clamping mechanisms, it applies to four-parting molds not only for hot core box coated sand core-making but also resin sand core-making. Its electrical control system uses Mitsubishi or Siemens PLC, ensuring superior performance and strong anti-interference capability. Equipped with an electric heating control system and temperature control instruments, it can automatically regulate the core box temperature. Model B is a single station with one shooting and one demolding station, while model C features two demolding stations theoretically doubling the productivity of model B.

Project Goals

Through the implementation of the SIPM/PLM project, achieve the following objectives:

1) Data Management: Implement product design and process design data management standards to better serve the backend; standardization of BOM, materials, drawings, etc.

2) Process Management: By sorting out the quality systems adopted by the enterprise, solidifying processes, and data templates, achieve transparent and visualized information management of project processes.

3) Change Management: Utilize PLM to standardize the management of R&D design changes, ensuring traceability and control of change documents.

4) Knowledge Management: Through the establishment of an information system, ensure continuous classification and accumulation of technical data within the enterprise, facilitating knowledge transfer and reducing costs associated with knowledge dissemination.

Overall Framework of PLM Solution

The overall framework report mainly covers: design management, with the core focus on achieving standardized and regulated R&D data management.

Overall Product Data Framework Diagram:

Design Management

Through structured management of product costs, cost control has been refined, ensuring the timeliness and accuracy of exporting BOM structures for product cost calculations. Additionally, based on customer business requirements, products and components are automatically classified, facilitating customers in locating relevant documentation.

Approval Process

Standardized business processes help to standardize the company's product development lifecycle. A visualized approval workflow enhances operational efficiency, enabling transparent and efficient review and approval tasks.

Approval Process Management

Electronic Signature Management for Drawings and Documents

Implement electronic signing for 3D engineering drawings and document files, optimizing the traditional review and approval process and reducing enterprise costs.

Electronic Signature Management

Knowledge Base Management

After implementing the SIPM/PLM system, a knowledge base and standard document library have been established. A structured knowledge system is built according to different types of knowledge, facilitating information sharing and retrieval, and supporting the standardization and normalization of documents. The system supports quick search and positioning, enabling efficient access to and reuse of knowledge.

Knowledge Base Management

Document Template Management

Establish document template management for easy retrieval and reuse when needed.

Document Template Management

Change History Traceability

Once data within the PLM system is modified, the system automatically compares the differences before and after the change, creating a change history record to facilitate process traceability.

PBOM Management

The PLM system fully publishes materials and BOMs to the PBOM package's material table and BOM table. Kingdee then automatically retrieves this data by calling Kingdee's material creation and BOM creation interfaces, returning a log of the retrieval. When materials or BOMs in the PLM system are modified, the complete set of materials and BOMs for the entire product is republished to the PBOM package. Kingdee uses an Engineering Change Order (ECO) interface to update materials and BOMs, recording the history of BOM additions, deletions, and modifications through the ECO.

Summary

Through the successful implementation of the PLM system, Suzhou Suzhu has continuously improved the management level of its design and R&D processes. This has progressively enhanced the standardization of design and R&D, improved the quality of development, and reduced product R&D costs. All documentation and drawings throughout the entire product R&D process are now centrally managed online, enabling designers to quickly search for data. By interfacing with Kingdee's systems for material and BOM creation and updates, R&D data is seamlessly transferred to the ERP system to guide production, significantly improving the work efficiency of design personnel.