While PLM and PDM initiatives have made explosive progress with product development functions, early and full integration with manufacturing has badly lagged. Yet the compounding complexity of today’s production processes raises many challenges for simplifying and streamlining manufacturing processes. The focus of the Digital Manufacturing Council is targeted at the entire end-to-end process of designing and building a product.

An important deliverable of the Digital Manufacturing Council, the Digital Manufacturing Scorecard captures input from industry leaders and ranks them across broad categories. Participants include high-, medium-, and low-volume producers from the consumer goods and food processing industry, the automotive sector, industrial machinery and other industry segments.

The Digital Manufacturing scorecard seeks to establish a framework of common terminology for integration and optimization of the diverse activities that fragment manufacturing production and design. Complementing that effort, the Electronics Integration Scorecard engages representatives across broad industries since electronic controls are a large part of a wide range of modern products. By implementing the best practices documented in these scorecards and related research reports, companies can transform their business by reducing costs and offering greater product variety.