Siemens Energy: Why Replacing Engineering Drawings Wasn't Enough

Executive Summary

Moving engineering drawings into 3D models wasn't enough. Siemens Energy needed to rethink how manufacturing information was created and used.

Siemens Energy manufactures complex equipment for electricity generation, energy transmission and industrial applications. Its engineering teams work across multiple product lines, manufacturing processes and international facilities.

Managing engineering information consistently is essential, particularly when component geometry, manufacturing tolerances, surface requirements and inspection information must remain connected throughout production.

Traditionally, much of this information was communicated through 2D engineering drawings accompanying the 3D CAD model.

Siemens Energy wanted to move towards a model-based approach, where the information required for manufacturing could be defined and managed directly within the digital product model.

The initial approach created an unexpected problem.

When the company first attempted to replace conventional drawings with Product Manufacturing Information (PMI), the cost exceeded the benefit.

The difficulty was that engineers were using PMI to recreate existing drawing conventions rather than fundamentally changing how product information was defined.

Simply transferring the old workflow into a new digital format wasn't delivering the intended efficiency improvements.

Changing the engineering workflow

Siemens Energy subsequently adopted a more comprehensive approach to Model-Based Definition (MBD), supported by Siemens NX and Teamcenter.

Rather than manually reproducing conventional drawing annotations, engineers developed rules for automatically generating dimension-driven form tolerances and surface requirements within the 3D model.

The resulting PMI remained associated with the model geometry, allowing manufacturing information to be reused in downstream processes, including CAM programming and quality assurance.

Siemens Energy also worked to improve the use of this information across its engineering teams and external manufacturing partners.

The documented results

The Siemens case study reports several improvements associated with the broader digital manufacturing implementation:

• Machine-tool OEE increased from 65% to 85%.
• Part machining time decreased by 25–36%.
• Computer-aided technologies (CAx) costs decreased by nearly 26%.
• Engineering drawings were eliminated from the company's product-definition processes.

These are reported outcomes from Siemens Energy's implementation, rather than guaranteed results from adopting individual software products.

What manufacturers can learn

The significant lesson is that digital transformation requires more than converting existing documents into digital equivalents.

For manufacturers evaluating model-based engineering, the challenge is ensuring that product geometry, tolerances, manufacturing requirements and inspection information can be created, managed and reused throughout the workflow.

Siemens Energy's experience demonstrates why reviewing the underlying engineering process can be just as important as selecting the software used to support it.

Explore the complete Siemens Energy case study to understand how NX Model-Based Definition, PMI automation and integrated engineering workflows supported the company's transition towards drawingless product definition.

D2M supports manufacturers across the GCC and North Africa in evaluating Siemens software and digital manufacturing technologies against their engineering and operational requirements.

Considering a similar initiative? Contact D2M to discuss your existing workflows and technology requirements.