BHEL PROFILE
It is the largest engineering and manufacturing enterprise of its kind in India and one of the leading international companies in the power field. BHEL offers over 180 products and provides systems and services to meet the needs of core sectors like: power, transmission, industry, transportation, oil & gas, non-conventional energy sources and telecommunication. A wide-spread network of 14 manufacturing divisions, 8 service centers and 4 regional offices besides a large number of project sites spread all over India and abroad, enables BHEL to be close to its customers and cater to their specialized needs with total solutions - efficiently and economically.

BHEL - VISION & MISSION

VISION : A world class Engineering Enterprise committed to

Enhancing stakeholder value.

MISSION : To be an Indian multinational Engineering enterprise

Providing Total Business Solutions trough Quality

Products, system and Services in the field of Energy,

Industry, Transportation, Infrastructure and other

Potential areas.

VALUES : Zeal to excel and for change, Integrity and fairness in

All Matters, respect for dignity & potential of

individual, Strict Adherence to commitments ensures,

speed of response ,and Foster learning, creativity and

teamwork.

CURRENT SITUATION & EXISTING SYSTEM
The Engineering Design department of BHEL prepares engineering drawings, which are then approved by its technology arm before releasing the same for manufacturing. It is a critical process as the technology cell first studies the feasibility of manufacturing the components in-house. The check-prints of a drawing are send to the technology section as paper printouts. The technologists work on these paper drawings, adding comments and remarks. The process is complex and time-consuming and following up on these drawings is a tedious process. Some critical problems BHEL has to contend with are given below.
Managing engineering drawings is cumbersome
The engineering information systems of BHEL that manage drawings and their revisions, print requisition, microfilms and cardex systems are not automated—they are manual, paper-based systems. Drawings are created using AutoCAD and are managed using Motiva DesignGroup. Motiva is used as a vault and it is not integrated with other drawing-related online database systems like combined bill of material (CBOM), print requisition systems and the revision management system. Users have to enter the profile data of components (title block data) both in the drawings and in Motiva manually. The basic problem was that in Motiva, users are not able to see all the drawings of an assembly at one go.

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Additionally, each assembly deals with multiple components, their specifications and properties. BHEL needs a system that would not only enhance the design approval process but also fit with existing online drawing-related database systems.
Complicated change advice system
A change advice (CA) is raised manually by the designers. The CA is first sent to the technologist for approval (by hand). The technical services department, after receipt, assign a change advice number to it. Then it is routed to the microfilming section (MF) for microfilming. After this it is sent to the central technical archive (CTA). The CTA issuses the drawing if it is a manual sketch, otherwise a red mark is put and it is send to the printing section for releasing the electronic drawing for change. After making changes, the drawing is submitted and the change advice form is sent manually to technical services. MF and CTA activities are repeated. “The main drawback is that this process was extremely slow and time-consuming. Also, tracking the change advice both by engineering and technical services is a big pain. Since the CA system is semi-manual, activities such as allotment of change advice number, generation of print request of the changed drawings are done in isolation and are not linked with the actual revision of drawings.
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Manual print request generation
In the system print requests are generated through the CBOM system but sometimes the drawings are not submitted (or released) in Motiva as the two systems are not integrated, leading to delays in print distribution. The print requests of the drawings are further uploaded to the print requisition system. Depending on this data, prints are taken by the technical services department from Motiva and distributed. The updation in the print requisition system is done manually for monitoring and reporting.
Manual workflow, approval & mark-up
The check prints of the drawings after being made in AutoCAD are requested by the engineering department to be sent to main technology section for approval. The complete group (entire assembly product) is sent to all the concerned sub-technology units one at a time. After technology put its remarks down, the bundle is sent back to main technology, which forwards it back to the engineering department. The complete process is manual and therefore it is very slow and there are many agencies involved (contract manufacturers). A lot of follow-up is required. The activities, which could have been done in parallel, are done serially. Mark-up and signatures ae done on paper, which cannot be produced electronically. Designers has to keep the signed check prints to take care of any future discrepancies.
Poor reporting system
No reporting system is available in Motiva and reports are generated manually.
Issues related to Motiva DesignGroup
Motiva is being used as a vault for drawings and limited approval workflow within engineering. No concept of PDM was present in it at that time and all the drawings were considered individual entities.
PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
Pilot to study system, customisation and training
A pilot to study the system will be kicked off. Starting from the group initiation till the manufacturing of the actual assembly, there are many processes associated with drawings. To understand the complete system, an implementation team from all the concerned engineering and technology departments will be formed. This team will finalised the software specification requirements (SRS), based on which the WRENCH will be customised to suit BHEL’s requirements.
To facilitate the use of WRENCH in engineering, training will given to all 300 users of the system. During training sessions many suggestions are expected to come from the users that will be incorporated in the new system. Support and hands-on training will be provided to users.
Stages
The implementation will take place in two phases. In phase one, the engineering part will be implemented i.e. automating and simplifying drawing management, checks and approval. In phase two, the complete system will be implemented, including product data management (PDM), drawing and document management (collaboration with other departments), release management and change/configuration management.
Phase one
During this phase, PDM will be integrated with CBOM for viewing the complete product structure. The process of submission and approval by engineering of drawings, an electronic CA system for electronic drawings, migration of Motive and the online database, computerisation of microfilming and CTA activities will be automated. Automatic print request generation and updation of database for printed drawings, and revision of drawings will be executed.

Phase two
After stabilising the implementation in the engineering department, the PLM project will go live in all the modules, including PDM, drawing and document management, release management and change management. Phase two will began with the implementation of technology workflow & approval system. This is a significant activity as the technology departments used to work with paper prints. There is seven technology departments and the drawings of an assembly can go to any of them. Usage of attribute-based formats by engineering for linking WRENCH profile data with attributes on the drawings is needed for capturing signatures of persons granting approval.

PROJECT RATIONALE
Benefits
The objective of investing in a PLM solution will be paid off to BHEL from day one. WRENCH PLM will help department in reducing the design document movement time by 35 percent and change advice processing time by 50 percent. WRENCH PLM will also be able to reduce the time spent during workflow and online approval.
Some other quantifiable benefits are:
Integration with CBOM • New system: The complete product structure (PDM) of the CBOM (group) will available to the user in WRENCH. Also, when the user adds the drawing file through product structure in Wrench, the system downloads data relevant to the drawing from the CBOM system. • Benefits: Users will be able to view the complete CBOM and the drawing in a single window. Double entry of data is completly eliminated. Users can view/preview the complete group and its attached drawings.
Change advice system: • New system: The CA and technology approval is conducted online. • Benefits: The new change advice system is fast and at any point of time the CA can be traced through the system. Usage of paper will be reduced as CA form and drawings will be available online. As the MF and CTA activities will be computerised, these activities will very fast and report generation is done through the system.
Print request generation: • New system: The print request generation will be done through WRENCH after the whole group will be submitted and released by the designer. WRENCH downloads the relevant route information from the CBOM system and generates a print request. • Benefits: Print request generation will be done for all the attached drawings that will be complet the workflow after checking that the CBOM is locked. The print request for those drawings that are not submitted or are in the stage ‘work in progress’ are not generated. Also all print requests will be available in the WRENCH print manager making the printing and updating print requisition system faster and easier to use.
Workflow/online approval and mark-up • New system: In WRENCH, the group of drawings after checking is sent to the main technologist who assigns individual drawings to the concerned sub-technologies. The technologists’ view, mark-up (redline) and approve the drawing online. After technology approval, the complete group is forwarded to the design approver who releases the complete group. • Benefits: Sub-technologists will be able to work on the concerned drawings in parallel, drastically reducing design cycle time. At any point, the stage of the drawing is known and the complete routing history is documented, helping do away with bottlenecks in the approval process. Signing is done online and the user ID of the agency approving is put on the drawing electronically.

Comprehensive reporting system • New system: WRENCH provides standard reports to be generated online as per the format given by technical services and engineering departments. • Benefits: Reports are quickly generated by the system and are authentic as they are directly generated from an online database.

Printing of drawings • New system: Printing is done through the WRENCH Print Manager. The print request along with its distribution information is generated and the check print request of the complete CBOM (group) drawings can be done all at once. • Benefits: Printing is very fast and the updation of the print requisition system is through WRENCH. The Wrench viewer can be used for printing drawings, doing away with the need for extra licenses of AutoCAD.

RESOURCES REQUIRED
IT infrastructure
WRENCH will be loaded on to a HCL Infiniti Pro Intel Pentium 4 server running Windows NT. The server will have 512 MB RAM, a 10,000 rpm Ultra SCSI 36 X 2 hard drive, 10/100 MBPS UTP network card, HP DDS4 with a 20/40 GB DAT drive for backup. The database is Oracle 9i. Clients are generally Pentium II, III or Pentium 4 machines from HCL, Siemens and Compaq running Windows9X/NT/2000/XP.
Cost of the project
The WRENCH deployment will be executed with an investment of Rs 40 lakh including the cost of hardware, software, implementation and training.