|
Strana 1 z 5 Technical Documentation in Industry and Software Development What is common and what is different Pavel Vrecion TD used in industrial design is far more complex and sophisticated than in other areas. In design process of machinery or electronics technical documentation is closely integrated not only into design process, but increasingly so in manufacturing, service and other processes. If you will compare role of TD in software design, you will find many similarities, but also differences. Questions are: In software industry documentation is “nice to have”. Many argue that documentation is a must, but in reality there are excellent programs with terrible or even non existent documentation (especially open source) and vice versa. Not so in industry. From the perspective of industrial company TD is a question of life and death. Stories of car giants like Toyota, GM and Fiat will explain why.
Technical documentation (TD) in industrial design Toyota story Toyota is considered as an model of efficiency and quality. Toyota has pioneered JIT (Just in Time) production process, which leads to lean production process with minimized stores. It also pioneered quality assurance GG. In production and design processes Toyota relentlessly improves its products, practice that is based on tradition of Japanese sword makers. What not so widely recognized is that Toyota pioneered usage of documentation, especially usage of 3D models. New car model development took approximately 30 months from design freeze (approval of major features and general look) to production. Streamlined design process based on 3D documentation and analysis shortened this time to less than 20 month. Consider that market prediction is considered to be good at 50% success rate on 2 years scale. That easily translates to million cars of overcapacity or shortage. Speeding up design process, together with flexible manufacturing base, translated to Toyota dominance in the car market. GM story While Toyota survived crisis, GM failed. As you probably know, there were huge losses in GMAC (leasing and finance services). These liabilities (mostly from pension plans) that lead to GM bankruptcy. But was it a cause? GM had some significant strengths. Sheer size was one of them, GM was the biggest car manufacturer with significant market share in BRIC countries, especially China. GM was market leader in light trucks, SUVs, where they lead in fuel consumption efficiency, and in emerging technologies like electric cars (GM Volt project). These strengths should outweight liabilities problems. But there were other problems, not so visible, but important. GM had significant problems in design phase and TD process. This has lead to prolonged design process, where having too many brands and models in production also did not help. Production base was not so versatile as in Toyota, which was able to adjust more quickly by increasing production of small cars instead of bigger ones, using the same factories. GM was not so blind and ignorant. GM started to improve design and TD processes and optimize its brands and production base well before crisis. When crisis struck, GM already started to catch up with Toyota in all important parameters like development speed and manufacturing base versatility. However it was too little too late. Fiat story Fiat story is combination of GM and Toyota stories. Fiat brands took too long to develop (for example Stilo took 26 months from design freeze to production). Manufacturing base was too rigid and costly. Fiat almost went bankrupt. Italy government intervention and strong presence in Brazil prevented full fledged bankruptcy. However it bought Fiat only some time to fix more profound problems. When Marchionne came, he sped up development. Massive use of 3D documentation and engineering analysis lead to significant time savings, when Bravo and Fiat 500 models were developed in just 18 months (see TheEconomist Apr 24th 2008: Rebirth of a carmaker). Quality of used software tools even enabled Fiat to skip crash tests on prototypes, and to make them only virtually, using high quality 3D digital models and simulations. This, together with advanced engines (Multiair) and Toyota style optimized manufacturing base lead to Fiat revival. Several years ago Fiat problem was survival, todays problem is expansion. What these stories teach us? Without good technical documentation (TD) there is no competitive industrial development. Bad technical documentation leads to stagnation and then to bankruptcy. TD in industry is matter of life and death, or from investors point of view, good TD makes several billion dollars difference.
|
