BUSINESS CHALLENGES
The Digital Forge is helping manufacturers and businesses solve complex design and production challenges.
Staying the course to develop advanced 3D printers, Markforged found their existing product development practices were no longer sufficient to keep up with growing product complexities and market demand. In addition, challenges came from managing information in spreadsheets, siloed product data management (PDM) and computer-aided design (CAD) systems, causing the company to experience missed deadlines, scrap, rework, and additional costs.
One critical pain point—managing engineering change orders (ECOs)—proved to be another crucial area that needed attention as teams manually recorded ECOs on spreadsheets and stored them in the Cloud. With the company expanding its product line, the number of ECOs grew, making it increasingly hard to track product changes accurately.
Another significant challenge Markforged faced was the absence of a consolidated bill of materials (BOM) for their products, coupled with inconsistencies between CAD files and what vendors received. To remedy the issue, engineers proactively requested quarterly BOM updates from the contract manufacturers (CMs).
With BOM in hand, an engineer had the laborious task of manually cross-referencing the ECOs for parts while updating the CAD files to match. This process was time-consuming and open to errors; it also impacted the project’s timelines. Jon Bond, Director of Mechanical Design said, “We could get things out the door when we had one or two products, but as our portfolio grew, it was difficult for us to understand what was in the product at the end of the day.”
With their commitment to quality, Markforged quickly recognized the need to improve their systems and processes.