Phillips and Temro — Empower Operations

THE PROBLEM

Silencers are widely used as auxiliary devices for industrial engines for noise reduction (see figure below). For our client, more than 40% of their production is for custom orders. For such designs, usually one engineer must spend at least two days to generate a design and all the production drawings.

The challenges are to:

1. Automate the design process.
2. Obtain the best design that minimizes production costs.

THE SOLUTION

We developed a web-based ordering system in which customers enter the order and their requirements through a website. The optimal design is then automatically developed by optimizing design parameters to meet customer requirements. The final design along with all associated engineering drawings are then displayed to the customer with an associated quotation. The figure on the right shows the strategy:

THE RESULTS

The results achieved exceeded expectations. We realized the following benefits:

1. An average cost reduction of 48%.
2. The process was fully automated. This effectively cut the original pre-production time of 16 man-hours to less than one minute.

Manitoba Hydro